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THE DEEMSTER. 









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( From a photograph by Messrs. Russell Sou,) 


The Deemster 


2 


H IRomance 



HALL CAINE 

l* 


AUTHOR OF 

’‘THE SHADOW OF A CRIME,” 
“THE BONDMAN,” 

“A SON OF HAGAR.” 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

H. M. WALCOTT 



NEW YORK 

R. F. FENNO AND COMPANY 

1 12 Fifth Avenue 


IVIAY 201895 

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OpI'VlilGUT, Jblij. 

K. F. FENNO AND COMPANY. 


Dear Wilson- Barrett: 

Permit me to place your name at the head of my booh, for 
I know full well that , whenever this story of great love and 
great suffering may be put upon the stage by you, it will ac- 
quire authority, dignity, strength of feeling, and tenderness 
of sentiment from a master of dramatic passion . 

Hall Caine. 







THE DEEMSTER 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE DEATH OF OLD EWAN. 

Thorkell Mylrea had waited long for a dead man*s 
shoes, but he was wearing them at length. He was forty years 
of age; his black hair was thin on the crown and streaked with 
gray about the temples; the crows’-feet were thick under his 
small eyes, and the backs of his lean hands were coated with 
a reddish down. But he had life in every vein and restless 
energy in every limb. 

His father, Ewan Mylrea, had lived long, and mourned 
much, and died in sorrow. The good man had been a patri- 
arch among his people, and never a serener saint had trod the 
ways of men. He was already an old man when his wife died. 
Over her open grave he tried to say, “ The Lord gave, and 
the Lord hath taken away; blessed — ” But his voice faltered 
and broke. Though he lived ten years longer, he held up his 
head no more. Little by little he relinquished all active in- 
terest in material affairs. The world had lost its light for 
him, and he was traveling in the dusk. 

On his sons, Thorkell, the elder, Gilcrist, the younger, with 
nearly five years between them, the conduct of his estate de- 
volved. Never were brothers more unlike. Gilcrist, resem- 
bling his father, was of a simple and tranquil soul; Thorkell's 
nature was fiery, impetuous, and crafty. The end was the in- 
evitable one; the heel of Thorkell was too soon on the neck of 
Gilcrist. 

Gilcrist's placid spirit overcame its first vexation, and he 
seemed content to let his interests slip from his hands. Be- 
fore a year was out Thorkell Mylrea was in effect the master 
of Ballamona; his younger brother was nightly immersed in 
astronomy and the Fathers, and the old man was sitting daily, 
in his slippers, in the high-backed arm-chair by the ingle, over 
which these words were cut in the black oak: “ God's Provi- 
dence is mine inheritance. ” 


8 


THE DEEMSTER. 


They were strange effects that followed. People said they 
had never understood the extraordinary fortunes of Ballamona. 
Again and again the rents were raised throughout the estate, 
until the farmers cried in the grip of their poverty that they 
would neither go nor starve. Then the wagons of Thorkell 
Mylrea, followed close at their tail-boards by the carts of the 
clergy, drove into the corn fields when the corn was cut, and 
picked up the stooks and bore them away amid the deep curses 
of the barearmed reapers who looked on in their impotent 
rage„ 

Nevertheless, Thorkell Mylrea said, far and wide, without 
any show of reserve, and with every accent of sincerity, that 
never before had his father’s affairs worn so grave a look. He 
told Ewan as much time after time, and then the troubled old 
face looked puzzled. The end of many earnest consultations 
between father and son, as the one sat by the open hearth and 
the other leaned against the lettered ingle, was a speedy re- 
course to certain moneys that lay at an English bank, as well 
as the old man's signature to documents of high moment. 

Old Ewan’s spirits sunk yet lower year by year, but he lived 
on peacefully enough. As time went by, he talked less, and 
his humid eyes seemed to look within in degree as they grew 
dim to things without. But the day came at length when the 
old man died in his chair, before the slumberous peat fire on 
the hearth, quietly, silently, without a movement, his grasp- 
less fingers fumbling a worm-eaten hour-glass, his long waves 
of thin white hair falling over his drooping shoulders, and his 
upturned eyes fixed in a strong stare on the text carved on the 
rannel-tree shelf, “ God’s Providenc is mine inheritance.” 

That night Thorkell sat alone at the same ingle, in the same 
chair, glancing at many parchments and dropping them one 
by one into the fire. Long afterward, when idle tongues were 
set to wag, it was said that the elder son of Ewan Mylrea had 
found a means whereby to sap away his father’s personalty. 
Then it was remembered that through all his strange misfort- 
unes Thorkell had borne an equal countenance. 

They buried the old man under the elder-tree by the wall of 
the church-yard that stands over against the sea. It seemed 
as if half of the inhabitants of the island came to his funeral, 
and six sets of bearers claimed their turn to carry him to the 
grave. The day was a gloomy day of winter; there was not a 
bird or a breath in the heavy air; the sky was low and empty; 
the long dead sea was very gray and cold; and over the un- 
plowed land the withered stalks of the last crop lay dank on 
the mold. When the company returned to Ballamona they 


THE DEEMSTER. 


sat down to eat and drink and make merry, for 44 excessive 
sorrow is exceeding dry.” No one asked for the will; there 
was no will because there was no personalty, and the lands 
were by law the inheritance of the eldest son. Thorkell was 
at the head of his table, and he smiled a little, and sometimes 
reached over the board to touch with his glass the glass that 
was held out toward him. Gilcrist had stood with these 
mourners under the empty sky, and his heart was as bare and 
desolate, but he could endure their company no longer. In 
an agony of grief and remorse, and rage as well, he got up 
from his untouched food and walked away to his own room. 
It was a little quiet nest of a room that looked out by one 
small window over the marshy curraghs that lay between the 
house and the sea. There Gilcrist sat alone that day in a sort 
of dull stupor. 

The daylight had gone, and the revolving lamps on the 
headland of Ayre were twinkling red after black over the blank 
waters, when the door opened and Thorkell entered. Gilcrist 
stirred the fire, and it broke into a bright blaze. ThorkelTs 
face wore a curious expression. 

44 I have been thinking a good deal about you, Gilcrist; espe- 
cially during the last few days. In fact, I have been troubled 
about you, to say the truth,” said Thorkell, and then he 
paused. “ Affairs are in a bad way at Ballamona — very.” 

Gilcrist made no response whatever, but clasped his hands 
about his knee and looked steadily into the fire. 

44 We are neither of us young men now, but if you should 
think of — of — anything, I should consider it wrong to stand — 
to put myself in your way — to keep you here that is — to your 
disadvantage, you know.” 

Thorkell was standing with his back to the fire, and his fin- 
gers interlaced behind him. 

Gilcrist rose to his feet. “ Very well,” he said, with a 
strained quietness, and then turned toward the window and 
looked out at the dark sea. Only the sea's voice from the 
shore beyond the church-yard broke the silence in that little 
room. 

Thorkell stood a moment, leaning on the mantel-shelf, and 
the flickering lights of the fire seemed to make sinister smiles 
on his face. Then he went out without a word. 

Next morning at day-break Gilcrist Mylrea was riding toward 
Derby Haven with a pack in green cloth across his saddle- 
bow. He took passage by the 4 4 King Orry,” an old sea tub 
plying once a week to Liverpool. From Liverpool he went on 
to Cambridge to offer himself as a sizar at the university. 


10 


THE DEEMSTER. 


It had never occurred to any one that Thorkell Mylrea would 
marry. But his father was scarcely cold in his grave, the old 
sea tub that took his brother across the Channel had hardly 
grounded at Liverpool, when Thorkell Mylrea offered his heart 
and wrinkled hand and the five hundred acres of Ballamona to 
a lady twenty years of age, who lived at a distance of some six 
miles from his estate. It would be more precise to say that 
the liberal tender was made to the lady's father, for her own 
will was little more than a cipher in the bargaining. She 
was a girl of sweet spirit, very tender and submissive, and 
much under the spell of religious feeling. Her mother had 
died during her infancy, and she had been brought up in a 
household that was without other children, in a gaunt rectory 
that never echoed with children's voices. Her father was arch- 
deacon of the island, Archdeacon Teare; her own name was 
Joance. 

If half the inhabitants of the island turned out at old Ewan's 
funeral, the entire population of four parishes made a holiday 
of his son's wedding. The one followed hard upon the other, 
and thrift was not absent from either. Thorkell was married 
in the early spring at the archdeacon's church at Andreas. 

It would be rash to say that the presence of the great com- 
pany at the wedding was intended as a tribute to the many 
virtues of Thorkell Mylrea. Indeed, it was as well that the 
elderly bridegroom could not overhear the conversation with 
which some of the homely folk beguiled the way. 

“ Aw, the murther of it," said one buirdly Manxman, 
“ five-and-forty if he's a day, and a wizened old polecat any 
way." 

“ You'd really think the gel's got no feelin's. Aw, shock- 
in', shockin’ extraordinary!" 

“And a rael good gel too, they're sayin'. Amazin'! 
Amazin'!" 

The marriage of Thorkell was a curious ceremony. First 
there walked abreast the fiddler and the piper, playing vigor- 
ously the “Black and Gray;" then came the bridegroom's 
men carrying osiers, as emblems of their superiority over the 
bride-maids, who followed them. Three times the company 
passed round the church before entering it, and then they 
trooped up toward the communion rail. 

Thorkell went through the ceremony with the air of a 
whipped terrier. On the outside he was gay in frills and cuffs, 
and his thin hair was brushed crosswise over the bald patch on 
his crown. He wore buckled shoes and blue laces to his 
breeches. But his brave exterior lent him small support as he 


THE DEEMSTER. 


11 


took the ungloved hand of his girlish bride. He gave his re- 
sponses in a voice that first faltered, and then sent ont a quick, 
harsh, loud pipe. No such gaunt and grim shadow of a joy- 
ful bridegroom e7er before knelt beside a beautiful bride, and 
while the archdeacon married this specter of a happy man to 
his own submissive daughter, the whispered comments of the 
throng that filled nave and aisles and gallery sometimes reached 
his own ears. 

“You wouldn’t think it, now, that the craythur’s sold his 
own gel, and him preaching there about the covenant and 
Isaac and Rebecca, and all that!” 

“ Hush, man, it’s Laban and Jacob he’s meaning.” 

When the ceremony had come to an end, and the bride- 
groom’s eyes were no longer fixed in a stony stare on the words 
of the Commandments printed in black and white under the 
chancel window, the scene underwent a swift change. In one 
minute Thorkell was like another man. All his abject bear- 
ing fell away. When the party was clear of the church-yard 
four of the groom’s men started for the rectory at a race, and 
the first to reach it won a flask of brandy, with which he re- 
turned at high speed to the wedding company. Then Thor- 
kell, as the custom was, bade his friends to form a circle where 
they stood in the road, while he drank of the brandy and 
handed the flask to his wife. 

“ Custom must be indulged with custom,” said he, “ or cus- 
tom will weep.” 

After that the company moved on until they reached the 
door of the archdeacon’s house, where the bride-cake was 
broken over the bride’s head, and then thrown to be scram- 
bled for by the noisy throng that blew neat’s horns and fired 
guns and sung ditties by the way. 

Thorkell, with the chivalrous bearing of an old courtier, de- 
livered up his wife to the flock of ladies who were ready to 
pounce upon her at the door of the rectory. Then he mingled 
freely with the people and chatted and bantered, and made 
quips and quibbles. Finally, he invited all and sundry to par- 
take freely of the oaten cake and ale that he had himself 
brought from Ballamona in his car for the refreshment of his 
own tenants there present. The fare was Lenten fare for a 
wedding-day, and some of the straggle-headed troop grumbled, 
and some sniffled, and some scratched their heads, and some 
laughed outright. The beer aud bread were left almost un- 
touched. 

Thorkell was blind to the discontent of his guests, but the 
archdeacon perceived it, and forthwith called such of the tu- 


12 


THE DEEMSTER. 


multuous assemblage as came from a distance into his barns. 
There the creels were turned bottom up, and four close- jointed 
gates lifted off their hinges were laid on the top for tables. 
Then from pans and boilers that simmered in the kitchen a 
great feast was spread. First came the broth, well loaded with 
barley and cabbage, and not destitute of the flavor of numer- 
ous sheep’s heads. This was served in wooden piggins, shells 
being used as spoons. Then suet pudding, as round as a well- 
fed salmon, and as long as a thirty-pound cod. Last of all a 
fat hog, roasted whole, and cut with a cleaver, but further 
dissected only by teeth and fingers, for the unfastidious Manx- 
man cared nothing for knife and fork. 

After that there were liquor and lusty song. And all the 
time there could be heard over the boisterous harmony of the 
feasters within the barn the yet noisier racket of the people 
without. 

By this time, whatever sentiment of doubtful charity had 
been harbored in the icy breast of the Manxman had been 
thawed away under the charitable effects of good cheer, and 
Thorkell Mylrea and Archdeacon Teare began to appear in 
truly Christian character. 

44 It’s none so ould he is yet, at all, at all.” 

“ Ould? He hasn’t the hayseed out of his hair, boy.’' 

4 4 And a shocking powerful head-piece at him for ail. ” 

There were rough jokes and dubious toasts, and Thorkell 
enjoyed them all. There was dancing, too, and fiddling, and 
the pipes at intervals, and all went merry until midnight, 
when the unharmonious harmonies of fiddle and pipes and un- 
steady song went off over the curraghs in various directions. 

Next morning Thorkell took his wife home to Ballamona. 
They drove in the open springless car in which he had brought 
down the oaten cake and ale. Thorkell had seen that the re- 
mains of these good viands were thriftily gathered up. He 
took them back home with him, carefully packed under the 
board on which his young wife sat. 


CHAPTER II. 

A MAN-CHILD IS BORN. 

Three years passed and Thorkell’s fortunes grew apace. 
He toiled early and late. Time had no odd days or holiday in 
his calendar. Every day was working day except Sunday, and 
then Thorkell, like a devout Christian, went to church. Thor- 
kell believed that he was a devoutly religious man, but rumor 


THE DEEMSTER. 


13 


whispered that he was better able to make his words fly up 
than to prevent his thoughts from remaining below. 

His wife did not seem to be a happy woman. During the 
three years of her married life she had not borne her husband 
children. It began to dawn upon her that ThorkelFs sole de- 
sire in marriage had been a child, a son, to whom he could 
leave what no man can carry away. 

One Sunday morning as Thorkell and his wife were on their 
way to church, a young woman of about twenty passed them, 
and as she went by she courtesied low to the lady. The girl had 
a comely nut-brown face with dark, wavy clusters of hair tum- 
bling over her forehead from beneath a white sun-bonnet of 
which the poke had been dexterously rolled back. It was 
summer, and her light blue bodice was open and showed a 
white under-bodice and a full neck. Her sleeves were rolled 
up over the elbows, and her dimpled arms were bare and 
brown. There was a look of 



shot up their dark luster 


dropped as quickly to her feet. She wore buckle shoes with 
the open clock tops. 

ThorkelFs quick eyes glanced over her, and when the girl 
courtesied to his wife he fell back the few paces that he was in 
front of her. 

“ Who is she?” he asked. 

ThorkelFs wife replied that the girl was a net-maker from 
near Peeltown. 

“ What's her name?” 

ThorkelFs wife answered that the girl's name was Mally 
Kerruish. 

“ Who are her people? Has she any?” 

ThorkelFs wife explained that the girl had a mother only, 
who was poor and worked in the fields, and had come to Balla- 
mona for help during the last hard winter. 

“ Humph! Doesn't look as if the daughter wanted for 
much. How does the girl come by her fine feathers if her 
mother lives on charity?” 

ThorkelFs wizened face was twisted into grotesque lines. 
His wife's face saddened, and her voice dropped as she hinted 
in faltering accents that “ scandal did say — say — ” 

“ Well, woman, what does scandal say?” asked Thorkell, 
and his voice had a curious lilt, and his mouth wore a strange 
smile. 

“ It says — I’m afraid, Thorkell, the poor girl is no better 
than she ought to be.” 


14 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Thorkell snorted, and then laughed in his throat like a frisky 
gelding. 

44 I thought she looked like a lively young puffin,” he said, 
and then trotted on in front, his head rolling between his 
shoulders, and his eyes down. After going a few yards 
further he slackened speed again. 

44 Lives near Peeltown, you say — a net-maker — Mally — is it 
Mally Kerruish?” 

Thorkell’s wife answered with a nod of the head, and then 
her husband faced about, and troubled her with no further 
conversation until he drew up at the church door, and said, 
44 Quick, woman, quick, and mind you shut the pew door after 
you.” 

But 44 God remembered Eachel and hearkened to her,” and 
then, for the first time, the wife of Thorkell Mylrea began to 
show a cheerful countenance. Thorkell’s own elevation of 
spirits was yet more noticeable. He had heretofore showed no 
discontent with the old homestead that had housed his people 
for six generations, but he now began to build another and 
much larger house on the rising ground at the foot of Slieu 
Dhoo. His habits underwent some swift and various changes. 
He gave away no gray blankets that winter, the itinerant poor 
who were 44 on the houses ” often went empty from his door, 
and — most appalling change of all — he promptly stopped his 
tithe. When the parson’s cart drove up to Ballamona, Thor- 
kell turned the horse’s head, and gave the flank a sharp cut 
with his whip. The parson came in white wrath. 

44 Let every pig dig for herself,” said Thorkell. 44 I’ll daub 
grease on the rump of your fat pig no more. ” 

Thorkell’ s new homestead rose rapidly, and when the walls 
were ready for the roof the masons and carpenters went up to 
Ballamona for the customary feast of Cowree and Jough and 
Bin jean. 

44 What! Is it true, then, as the saying is,” Thorkell ex- 
claimed at the sight of them, 44 that when the sport is the 
merriest it is time to give up?” 

They eat no cowree at Ballamona that night and they drank 
no jough. 

44 We’ve been going to the goat’s house for wool,” grunted 
one of them as they trudged homo. 

44 Aw, well, man, and what can you get of the cat but his 
skin?” growled another. 

Next day they put on the first timbers of the roof, and the 
following night a great storm swept over the island, and the 
% roof timbers were torn away, not a spar or purlin being left in 


THE DEEMSTER. 


15 


its place. Thorkell fumed at the storm and swore at the men, 
and when the wind subsided he had the work done afresh. 
The old homestead of Ballamona was thatched, but the new 
one must be slated, and slates were quarried at and carted to 
Slieu Dhoo, and run on to the new roof. A dead calm had 
prevailed during these operations, but it was the calm that lies 
in the heart of the storm, and the night after they were com- 
pleted the other edge of the cyclone passed over the island, 
tearing up the trees by their roots, and shaking the old Balla- 
mona to its foundations. Thorkell Mylrea slept not a wink, 
but tramped up and down his bedroom the long night through; 
and next morning, at day-break, he drew the blind of his win- 
dow, and peered through the haze of the dawn to where his 
new house stood on the breast of Slieu Dhoo. He could just 
descry its blue walls — it was roofless. 

The people began to mutter beneath their breath. 

“ Aw, man, it's a judgment,” said one. 

“ He has been middlin’ hard on the widda and fatherless, 
and it’s like enough that there’s Them aloft as knows it.” 

“ What’s that they’re saying?” said one old crone, “ what 
comes with the wind goes with the water.” 

“ Och, I knew his father — him and me were same as broth- 
ers — and a good ould man for all.” 

“ Well, and many a good cow has a bad calf,” said the old 
woman. 

Thorkell went about like a cloud of thunder, and when he 
heard that the accidents to his new homesteads were ascribed 
to supernatural agencies he flashed like forked lightning. 

“ Where there are geese there’s dirt,” he said, “ and where 
there are women there’s talking. Am I to be frightened if an 
old woman sneezes?” 

But before Thorkell set to work again he paid his tithe. 
He paid it with a rick of discolored oats that had been cut in 
the wet and threshed before it was dry. Thorkell had often 
wondered whether his cows would eat it. The next Sunday 
morning the parson paused before his sermon to complain that 
certain of his parishioners, whom he would not name at pres- 
ent, appeared to think that what was too bad for the pigs was 
good enough for the priests. Let the Church of God have no 
more of their pig-swill. Thorkell in his pew chuckled audibly 
and muttered something about paying for a dead horse. 

It was spring when the secoud roof was blown down, and 
the new house stood roofless until early summer. Then Thor- 
kell sent four lean pigs across to the rectory, and got his car- 


16 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


penters together and set them to work. The roofing proceeded 
without interruption. 

The primrose was not yet gone, the swallow had not yet 
come, and the young grass under the feet of the oxen was still 
small and sweet when Thorkell's wife took to her bed. Then 
all Ballamona was astir. Hommy-beg, the deaf gardener of 
Ballamona, was sent in the hot haste of his best two miles an 
hour to the village, commonly known as the Street, to sum- 
mon the midwife. This good woman was called Kerry Quayle; 
she was a spinster of forty, and she was all but blind. 

“ Fm thinking the woman-body is after going on the 
straw," said Hommy-beg, when he reached the Street, and 
this was the sum of the message that he delivered. 

“ Then we'd better be off, as the saying is/’ remarked 
Kerry, who never accepted responsibility for any syllable she 
ever uttered. 

When they got to Ballamona, Thorkell Mylrea bustled 
Hommy-beg into the square, springless car, and told him to 
drive to Andreas, and fetch the archdeacon without an hour's 
delay. Hommy-beg set off at fine paces that carried him to 
the archdeaconry a matter of four miles an hour. 

Thorkell followed Kerry Quayle to the room above. When 
they stepped into the bedroom Thorkell drew the midwife 
aside to a table on which a large candle stood in a tall brass 
candlestick with grewsome gargoyles carved on the base and 
upper flange. From this table he picked up a small Testa- 
ment bound in shiny leather, with silver clasps. 

“ I'm as great a man as any in the island," said Thorkell, 
in his shrill whisper, “ for laughing at the simpletons that talk 
about witches and boaganes and the like of that. " 

“ So you are, as the saying is," said Kerry. 

“ I'd have the law on the lot of them, if I had my way," 
said Thorkell, still holding the book. 

“ Aw, and shockin' powerful luck it would be, as the old 
body said, if all the witches and boaganes in the island could 
be run into the sea," said Kerry. 

“Pshaw! I'm talking of the simpletons that believe in 
them," said Thorkell, snappishly. “I'd clap them all in 
Castle Rushen." 

“ Aw, yes, and clean law and clean justice, too, as the 
Irishman said." 

“ So don't think I want the midwife to take her oath in my 
house," said Thorkell. 

“ Och, no, of coorse not. You wouldn't bemean yourself, 
as they say." 


THE DEEMSTER. 


17 


“ But, then, you know what the saying is, Kerry. * Cus- 
tom must be indulged with custom, or custom will weep/ " 
and, saying this, Thorkell's voice took a most insinuating 
tone. 

“ Aw, now, and I'm as good as here and there one at stand- 
ing up for custom, as the saying is," said the midwife. 

The end of it all was that Kerry Quayle took there and then 
a solemn oath not to use sorcery or incantation of any kind in 
the time of travail, not to change the infant at the hour of its 
birth, not to leave it in the room for a week afterward with- 
out spreading the tongs over its crib, and much else of the like 
solemn purport. 

The dusk deepened, and the archdeacon had not yet arrived. 
Night came on, and the room was dark, but Thorkell would 
not allow a lamp to be brought in, or a fire to be lighted. 
Some time later, say six hours after Hommy-beg had set out 
on his six-mile journey, a lumbrous, jolting sound of heavy 
wheels came from the road below the curragh, and soon after- 
ward the archdeacon entered the room. 

“ So dark," he said, on stumbling across the threshold. 

“ Ah! archdeacon," said Thorkell, with the unaccustomed 
greeting of an outstretched hand, “ the Church shall bring 
light to the chamber here," and Thorkell handed the tinder- 
box to the archdeacon and led him to the side of the table on 
which the candle stood. 

In an instant the archdeacon, laughing a little or protesting 
meekly against his clerical honors, was striking the flint, when 
Thorkell laid a hand on his arm. 

“ Wait one moment; of course you know how I despise su- 
perstition?" 

“Ah! of course, of course," said the archdeacon. 

“ But, then, you know the old saying, archdeacon, ‘ Cus- 
tom must be indulged with custom/ you know it?" And 
ThorkelFs face shut up like a nut-cracker. 

“ So I must bless the candle. Eh, is that it?" said the 
archdeacon, with a low gurgle, and the next moment he was 
gabbling in a quick under-tone through certain words that 
seemed to be all one word: “ Oh-Lord-Jesus-Christ-bless- 
Thou - this - creature - of -a-waxen-taper-that-on-what-place-so- 
ever-it-be-lighted - or - set- the-devil T may-flee-f rom-that-habita- 
tion-and-no-more-disquiet-them-that-serve — Thee ! ’ ' 

After the penultimate word there was a short pause, and at 
the last word there was the sharp crack of the flint, and in an 
instant the candle was lighted. 

Then the archdeacon turned toward the bed and exchanged 


18 


THE DEEMSTER. 


some words with his daughter. The bed was a mahogany 
four-post one, with legs like rocks, a hood like a pulpit sound- 
ing-board, and tapestry curtains like a muddy avalanche. 
The archdeacon — he was a small man, with a face like a 
russet apple— leaned against one of the bed-posts, and said, 
in a tone of banter: 

“ Why, Thorkell, and if you’re for indulging custom, how 
comes it that you have not hung up your hat?” 

“ My hat — my hat!” said Thorkell, in perplexity. 

“ Aw, now,” said the midwife, “ the master’s as great a 
man as any in the island at laughing at the men craythurs that 
hang up their hats over the straw to frighten the boaganes, as 
the old woman said. ” 

Thorkell’s laughter instantly burst forth to justify the mid- 
wife’s statement. 

“Ha, ha! Hang up my hat! Well, now, well, now! 
Drives away the black spirits from the birth-bed — isn’t that 
what the dunces say? It’s twenty years since I saw the like of 
it done, and I’d forgotten the old custom. Must look funny, 
very, the good man’s hat perched up on the bed-post? What 
d’ye say, archdeacon, shall we have it up? Just for the 
laugh, you know, ha, ha!” 

In another moment Thorkell was gone from the room, and 
his titter could be heard from the stairs; it ebbed away and 
presently flowed back again, and Thorkell was once more by 
the bedside, laughing immoderately, and perching his angular 
soft hat on the topmost knob of one of the posts at the foot of 
the bed. 

Then Thorkell and the archdeacon went down to the little 
room that had once been Gilcrist’s room, looking over the 
curragh to the sea. 

Before day-break next morning a man-child was born to 
Thorkell Mylrea, and an heir to the five hundred acres of 
Ballamona. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE CHRISTENING OF YOUNG EWAN. 

In the dead waste of that night the old walls of Ballamona 
echoed to the noise of hurrying feet. Thorkell himself ran 
like a squirrel, hither and thither, breaking out now and 
again into shrill peals of hysterical laughter; while the women 
took the kettle to the room above, and employed themselves 
there in sundry mysterious ordinances on which no male busy- 
body might intrude. Thorkell dived down into the kitchen. 


THE DEEMSTEE. 


19 


and rooted about in the meal casks for the oaten oake, and 
into the larder for the cheese, and into the cupboard for the 
bread-basket known as the “ peck.” 

Hommy-beg, who had not been permitted to go home that 
night, had coiled himself in the settle drawn up before the 
kitchen fire, and was now snoring lustily. Thorkell roused 
him, and set him to break the oat-cake and cheese into small 
pieces into the peck, and, when this was done, to scatter it 
broadcast on the staircase and landing, and on the garden- 
path immediately in front of the house, while he himself car- 
ried a similar peck, piled up like a pyramid with similar pieces 
of oat-cake and cheese, to the room whence there issued at 
intervals a thin, small voice, that was the sweetest music that 
had ever yet fallen on ThorkelFs ear. 

What high commotion did the next day witness! For the 
first time since that lurid day when old Ewan Mylrea was laid 
.under the elder-tree in the church-yard by the sea, Ballamona 
kept open house. The itinerant poor, who made the circuit 
of the houses, came again, and lifted the latch without knock- 
ing, and sat at the fire without being asked, and eat of the 
oat-cake and the cheese. And upstairs, where a meek white 
face looked out with an unfamiliar smile from behind sheets 
that were hardly more white, the robustious states-people from 
twenty miles around sat down in their odorous atmosphere of 
rude health and high spirits, and noise and laughter, to drink 
their glass of new brewed jough, and to spread on their oaten 
bread a thick crust of the rum-butter that stood in the great 
blue china bowl on the little table near the bed-head. And 
Thorkell — how nimbly he hopped about, and encouraged his 
visitors to drink, and rallied them if they ceased to eat ! 

“ Come, man, come,” he said a score of times, “ shameful 
leaving is worse than shameful eating — eat, drink!” 

And they eat, and they drank, and they laughed, and they 
sung, till the bedroom reeked with the fumes of a pot-house, 
and the confusion of tongues therein was worse than at the 
foot of Babel. 

Throughout three long jovial weeks the visitors came and 
went, and every day the “blithe bread” was piled in the 
peck for the poor of the earth, and scattered on the paths for 
the good spirits of the air. And when people jested upon 
this, and said that not since the old days of their grandfathers 
had the boaganes and the fairies been so civilly treated, Thor- 
kell laughed noisily, and said what great fun it was that they 
should think he was superstitious, and that custom must be 
indulged with custom, or custom would weep! 


20 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Then came the christening, and to this ceremony the whole 
country round was invited. Thorkell was now a man of con- 
sequence, and the neighbors high and low trooped in with 
presents for the young Christian. 

Kerry, the midwife, who was nurse as well, carried the 
child to church, and the tiny red burden lay cooing softly at 
her breast in a very hillock of white swaddlings. Thorkell 
walked behind, his little eyes twinkling under his bushy eye- 
brows; and on his arm his wife leaned heavily after every 
feeble step, her white wax-work face bright with the smile of 
first motherhood. 

The archdeacon met the company at the west porch, and 
they gathered for the baptism about the font in the aisle: 
half-blind Kerry with the infant, Thorkell and his young wife, 
the two godfathers: the vicar-general and the High Bailiff of 
Peeltown, and the godmother, the high bailiff's wife, and be- 
hind this circle a mixed throng of many sorts. After the 
gospel and the prayers, the archdeacon, in his white surplice, 
took the infant into his hands and called on the godparents to 
name the child, and they answered Ewan. Then as the drops 
fell over the wee blinking eyes, and all voices were hushed in 
silence and awe, there came to the open porch and looked into 
the dusky church a little fleecy lamb, all soft and white and 
beautiful. It lifted its innocent and dazed face where it stood 
in the morning sunshine, on the grass of the graves, and 
bleated, and bleated, as if it had strayed from its mother and 
was lost. 

The archdeacon paused with his drooping finger half raised 
over the other innocent face at his breast, Thorkell's features 
twitched, and the tears ran down the white cheeks of his wife. 

In an instant the baby-lamb had hobbled away, and before 
the archdeacon had restored the child to the arms of blind 
Kerry, or mumbled the last of the prayers, there came the 
hum of many voices from the distance. The noise came 
rapidly nearer, and as it approached it broke into a tumult of 
men's deep shouts and women's shrill cries. 

The iron hasp of the lych-gate to the church-yard was heard 
to chink, and at the same moment there was the sound of 
hurrying footsteps on the paved way. The company that had 
gathered about the font broke up abruptly, and made for the 
porch with looks of inquiry and amazement. There, at the 
head of a mixed throng of the riff-raff of the parish, bare- 
headed men, women with bold faces, and children with naked 
feet, a man held a young woman by the arm and pulled her 
toward the church. He was a stalwart fellow, stern of feat- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


21 

ure, iron gray, and he gripped the girl's bare brown arm like 
a vise. 

“ Make way there! Come, mistress, and no straggling," 
he shouted, and he tagged the girl after him, and then pushed 
her before him. 

She was young — twenty at most. Her comely face was 
drawn hard with lines of pain; her hazel eyes flashed with 
wrath; and where her white sun-bonnet had fallen back from 
her head on to her shoulders, the knots of her dark hair, 
draggled and tangled in the scuffle, tumbled in masses over 
her neck and cheeks. 

It was Mally Kerruish, and the man who held her and 
forced her along was the parish sumner, the church constable. 

“ Make way, I tell you!" shouted the sumner to the throng 
that crowded upon him, and into the porch, and through the 
company that had come for the christening. When the arch- 
deacon stepped down from the side of the font, the sumner 
with his prisoner drew up on the instant, and the noisy crew 
stood and was silent. 

“ I have brought her for her oath, your reverence," said 
the sumner, dropping his voice and his head together. 

“ Who accuses her?" the archdeacon asked. 

“ Her old mother," said the sumner; “ here she is." 

From the middle of the throng behind him the sumner drew 
out an elderly woman with a hard and wizened face. Her 
head was bare, her eyes were quick and restless, her lips firm 
and long, her chin was broad and heavy. The woman elbowed 
her way forward; but when she was brought face to face with 
the archdeacon, and he asked her if she charged her daughter, 
she looked around before answering, and seeing her girl Mally 
standing there with her white face, under the fire of fifty pairs 
of eyes, all her resolution seemed to leave her. 

“ It isn't natheral, I know," she said, “ a mother speaking 
up agen her child," and with that her hard mouth softened, 
her quick eyes reddened and filled, and her hands went up to 
her face. “ But nature goes down with a flood when you're 
looking to have another belly to fill, and not a shilling at you 
this fortnight." 

The girl stood without a word, and not one streak of color 
came to her white cheeks as her mother spoke. 

“ She denied it, and denied it, and said no, and no; but 
leave it to a mother to know what way her girl's going." 

There was a low murmur among the people at the back and 
some whispering. The girl's keen ear caught it, and she 
turned her head over her shoulder with a defiant glance. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


22 


“ Who is the man?” said the archdeacon, recalling her 
with a touch of his finger on her arm. 

She did not answer at first, and he repeated the question. 

“Who is the guilty man?” he said in a voice more stern. 

“ It’s not true. Let me go,' ' said the girl, in a quick un- 
der-tone. 

“ Who is the partner of your sin?” 

“ It's not true, I say. Let me go, will you?” and the girl 
struggled feebly in the sumner's grip. 

“ Bring her to the altar,” said the archdeacon. He faced 
about and walked toward the communion and entered it. The 
company followed him and drew up outside the communion 
rail. He took a Testament from the reading-desk and stepped 
toward the girl. There was a dead hush. 

“ The Church provides a remedy for slander,” he said, in a 
cold, clear tone. “ If you are not guilty, swear that you are 
innocent, that he who tampers with your good name may be- 
ware. ” With that the archdeacon held the Testament toward 
the girl. She made no show of taking it. He thrust it into 
her hand. At the touch of the book she gave a faint cry and 
stepped a pace backward, the Testament falling open on to 
the penitent-form beneath. 

Then the murmur of the by-standers rose again. The girl 
heard it once more, and dropped on her knees and covered her 
face, and cried in a tremulous voice that echoed over the 
church, “ Let me go, let me go.” 

The company that came for the christening had walked up 
the aisle. Blinking Kerry stood apart, hushing the infant in 
her arms; it made a fretful whimper. Thorkell stood behind, 
pawing the paved path with a restless foot. His wife had 
made her way to the girl's side, her eyes overflowing with 
compassion. 

“ Take her to prison at the Peel,” said the archdeacon, 
“ and keep her there until she confesses the name of her para- 
mour.” At that Thorkell' s wife dropped to her knees beside 
the kneeling girl, and putting one arm about her neck, raised 
the other against the sumner, and cried, “ No, no, no; she 
will confess. ” 

There was a pause and a long hush. Mally let her hand® 
fall from her face, and turned her eyes full on the eyes of the 
young mother at her side. In dead silence the two rose to 
their feet together. 

“ Confess his name; whoever he is, he does not deserve that 
you should suffer for him as well,” said the wife of Thorke^j 


THE DEEMSTER. 


23 


Mylrea, and as she spoke she touched the girl’s white forehead 
with her pale Ups. 

“ Do you ask that?” said Mally, with a strange quietness. 

For one swift instant the eyes of these women seemed to see 
into each other's heart. The face of ThorkelTs wife became 
very pale; she grew faint, and clutched the communion rail as 
she staggered back. 

At the next instant Mally Kerruish was being hurried by 
the sumner down the aisle; the noisy concourse that had come 
with them went away with them, and in a moment more the 
old church was empty save for the company that had gathered 
about the font. 

There was a great feast at Ballamona that day. The new 
house was finished, and the young Christian, Ewan Mylrea, 
of Ballamona, was the first to enter it; for was it not to be his 
house, and his children’s, and his children’s children’s? 

Thorkell’s wife did not join the revels, but in her new home 
she went back to her bed. The fatigue and excitement of the 
day had been too much for her. Thorkell himself sat in his 
place, and laughed noisily and drank much. Toward sunset 
the sumner came to say that the girl who had been taken to 
prison at the Peel had confessed, and was now at large. The 
archdeacon got up and went out of the room. Thorkell called 
lustily on his guests to drink again, and one stupefied old 
crony clambered to his feet and demanded silence for a toast. 

“ To the father of the girl’s by-blow,” he shouted, when 
the glasses were charged; and then the company laughed till 
the roof rang, and above all was the shrill laugh of Thorkell 
Mylrea. Presently the door opened again, and the archdeacon, 
with a long, grave face, stood on the threshold and beckoned 
to Thorkell at the head of his table. Thorkell went out with 
him, and when they returned together a little later, and the 
master of Ballamona resumed his seat, he laughed yet more 
noisily than before, and drank yet more liquor. 

On the outside of Ballamona that night an old woman, 
hooded and caped, knocked at the door. The loud laughter 
and the ranting songs from within came out to her where she 
stood in the darkness, under the silent stars. When the door 
was opened by Hommy-beg the woman asked for Mylrea Bal- 
lamona. Hommy-beg repulsed her, and would have shut the 
door in her face. She called again, and again, and yet again, 
and at last, by reason of her importunity, Hommy-beg w T ent 
in and told Thorkell, who got up and followed him out. The 
archdeaoon heard the message, and left the room at the same 
moment. 


24 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Outside, on the gravel path, the old woman stood with the 
light of the lamp that burned in the hall on her wizened face. 
It was Mrs. Kerruish, the mother of Mally. 

“ It's fine times you're having of it. Master Mylrea," she 
said, “ and you, too, your reverence; but what about me and 
my poor girl?" 

“It was yourself that did it, woman," said Thorkell; and 
he tried to laugh, but under the stars his laugh fell short. 

“ Me, you say? Me, was it for all? May the good God 
Judge between us, Master Mylrea. D’ye know what it is 
that's happened? My poor girl's gone." 

“ Gone!" 

“ Eh, gone — gone ofi — gone to hide her shameful face; God 
help her. " 

“ Better luck," said Thorkell, and a short gurgle rattled in 
his dry throat. 

“ Luck, you call it? Luck! Take care, Ballamona." 

The archdeacon interposed. “ Come, no threats, my good 
woman," he said, and waved his hand in protestation. “ The 
Church has done you justice in this matter. " 

“ Threats, your reverence? Justice? Is it justice to pun- 
ish the woman and let the man go free? What! the woman 
to stand penance six Sabbaths by the church door of six par- 
ishes, and the man to pay his dirty money, six pounds to you 
and three to me, and then no mortal to name his name!" 

The old woman rummaged in her pocket at her side and 
pulled out a few coins. “Here, take them back; I'm no 
Judas to buy my own girl. Here, I say, take them!" 

Thorkell had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was mak- 
ing a great show of laughing boisterously. 

The old woman stood silent for a moment, and her pale face 
turned livid. Then by a sudden impulse she lifted her eyes 
and her two trembling arms. “ God in heaven," she said' in 
a hoarse whisper,, “let Thy wrath rest on this man's head; 
make this house that he has built for himself and for his chil- 
dren a curse to him and them and theirs; bring it to pass that 
no birth come to it but death come with it, and so on and on 
until Thou hast done justice between him and me." 

Thorkell's laughter stopped suddenly. As the woman spoke 
his face quivered, and his knees shook perceptibly under him. 
Then he took her by the arms and clutched her convulsively. 
“Woman, woman, what are you saying?" he cried in his 
shrill treble. She disengaged herself and went away into the 
night. 

Eor a moment Thorkell tramped the hall with nervous 











“God in Heaven !” she said in a hoarse whisper .— Page 24, 










y 


THE DEEMSTER. 


25 


footsteps. The archdeacon stood speechless. Then the sound 
of laughter and song came from the room they had left, and 
Thorkell flung in on the merry-makers. 

“ Go home, go home, every man of you! Away with you!” 
he shouted, hysterically, and then dropped like a log into a 
chair. 

One by one, with many wise shakes of many sapient heads, 
the tipsy revelers broke up and went ofl, leaving the master of 
Ballamona alone in that chamber, dense with dead smoke, and 
noisome with the fumes of liquor. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE DEEMSTER OF MAH’. 

Twenty times that night Thorkell devised expedients to 
break the web of fate. At first his thoughts were of revenge- 
ful defiance. By fair means or foul the woman Kerruish 
should suffer. She should be turned out of house and home. 
She should tramp the roads as a mendicant. He would put 
his foot on her neck. Then they would see what her uncanny 
threats had come to. 

He tried this unction for his affrighted spirit, and put it 
aside as useless. No, no; he would conciliate the woman. 
He would settle an annuity of five pounds a year upon her; he 
would give her the snug gate cottage of old Ballamona to live 
in; his wife should send her warm blankets in winter, and 
sometimes a pound of tea, such as old folks love. Then must 
her imprecation fall impotent, and his own fate be undisturbed. 

ThorkelPs bedroom in his new house on Slieu Dhoo looked 
over the curraghs to the sea. As the day dawned he opened 
the window, and thrust out his head to drink of the cool morn- 
ing air. The sun was rising over the land behind, a strong 
breeze was sweeping over the marshes from the shore, and the 
white curves of the breakers to the west reflected here and 
there the glow of the eastern sky. With the salt breath of the 
sea in his nostrils, it seemed to Thorkell a pitiful thing that a 
man should be a slave to a mere idea; a thing for shame and 
humiliation that the sneezing of an old woman should disturb 
the peace of a strong man. Superstition was the bugbear of 
the Manxman, but it would die of shame at its sheer absurdity, 
only that it was pampered by the law. Toleration for super- 
stition! Every man who betrayed faith in omens or portents, 
or charms or spells, or the power of the evil eye, should be 
instantly clapped in the castle. It was but right that a rabid 
dog should be muzzled. 


26 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Thorkell shut the window, closed the shutters, threw ofl his 
clothes, and went back to bed. In the silence and the dark- 
ness, his thoughts took yet another turn. What madness it 
was, what pertness and unbelief, to reject that faith in which 
the best and wisest of all ages had lived and died! Had not 
omens and portents, and charms and spells, and the evil eye 
been believed in in all ages? What midget of modern days 
should now arise with a superior smile and say, “ Behold this is 
folly: Saul of Israel and Saul of Tarsus, and Samuel and Solo- 
mon rose up and lay down in folly. ” 

Thorkell leaped out of bed, sweating from every pore. The 
old woman, Kerruish, should be pensioned; she should live in 
the cozy cottage at the gates of Ballamona; she should have’ 
blankets and tea and many a snug comfort; her daughter 
should be brought back and married — yes, married — to some 
honest fellow. 

The lark was loud in the sky, the rooks were stirring in the 
lofty ash, the swallows pecking at the lattice, when sleep came 
at length to ThorkelTs blood-shot eyes, and he stretched him- 
self in a short and fitful slumber. He awoke with a start. 
The lusty rap of Hommy-beg was at the door of his room. 
There was no itinerant postman, and it was one of Hommy- 
beg’s daily duties to go to the post-office. He had been there 
this morning, and was now returned with a letter for his 
master. 

Thorkell took the letter with nervous fingers. He had 
recognized the seal — it was the seal of the insular government. 
The letter came from Castle Rushen. He broke the seal and 
read: 

“ Castle Rushen, June 8. 

“Sir, — I am instructed by his excellency to beg you to 
come to Castletown without delay, and to report your arrival 
at the Castle to Madame Churchill, who will see you on behalf 
of the duchess. 

“ I have the honor to be, etc.” 

The letter was signed by the secretary to the governor. 

What did it mean? Thorkell could make nothing of it but 
that in some way it boded ill. In a bewildered state of semi- 
consciousness he ordered that a horse should be got ready and 
brought round to the front. Half an hour later he had risen 
from an untouched breakfast and was seated in the saddle. 

He rode past Tynwald Hill and through Foxdale to the 
south. Twenty times he drew up and half-reined his horse 
in another direction. But he went on again. He could turn 


THE DEEMSTER. 


2 *? 

about at any time. He never turned about. At two o’clock 
that day he stood before the low gate of the Castle and pulled 
at the great clanging bell. 

He seemed to be expected, and was immediately led to a 
chamber on the north of the court-yard. The room was small 
and low; it was dimly lighted by two lancet windows set deep 
into walls that seemed to be three yards thick. The floor was 
covered with a rush matting; a harp stood near the fire-place. 
A lady rose as Thorkell entered. She was elderly, but her 
dress was youthful. Her waist was short; her embroidered 
skirt was very long; she wore spangled shoes, and her hair 
was done into a knot on the top of her head. 

Thorkell stood before her with the mien of a culprit. She 
smiled and motioned him to a seat, and sat herself. 

“You have heard of the death of one of our two deem- 
sters?” she asked. 

ThorkelTs face whitened, and he bowed his head. 

“ A successor must soon be appointed, and the Deemster is 
always a Manxman; he must know the language of the com- 
mon people.” 

ThorkelTs face wore a bewildered expression. The lady’s 
manner was very suave. 

“ The appointment is the gift of the lord of the island, and 
the duchess is asked to suggest a name.” 

ThorkelTs face lightened. He had regained all his com- 
posure. 

“ The duchess has heard a good account of you, Mr. Mylrea. 
She is told that by your great industry and — wisdom — you 
have raised yourself in life — become rich, in fact. ” 

The lady’s voice dropped to a tone of most insinuating 
suavity. Thorkell stammered some commonplace. 

“ Hush, Mr. Mylrea, you shall not depreciate yourself. 
The duchess has heard that you are a man of enterprise — one 
who does not begrudge the penny that makes the pound.” 

Thorkell saw it all. He was to be made Deemster, but he 
was to buy his appointment. The duchess had lost money of 
late, and the swashbuckler court she kept had lately seen some 
abridgment of its gayeties. 

“ To be brief, Mr. Mylrea, the duchess has half an intention 
of suggesting your name for the post, but before doing so she 
wished me to see in what way your feelings lie with regard to it. ” 

ThorkelTs little eyes twinkled, and his lips took an upward 
curve. He placed one hand over his breast and bent his head. 
“ My feelings, madame, lie in one way only — the way of grati* 
tude,” he said, meekly. 


28 


THE DEEMSTER. 


The lady’s face broadened, and there was a pause. 

44 It is a great distinction, Mr. Mylrea/’ said the lady, and 
she drew her breath inward. 

“ The greater my gratitude/’ said Thorkell. 

44 And how far would you go to show this gratitude to the 
duchess?” 

44 Any length* madame,” said Thorkell, and he rose and 
bowed. 

“ The duchess is at present at Bath — ” 

44 1 would go so far, and — further, madame, further,” said 
Thorkell, and as he spoke he thrust his right hand deep into 
his pocket, and there— by what accident may not be said — it 
touched some coins that chinked. 

There was another pause, and then the lady rose and held 
out her hand, and said, in a significant tone: 

4 4 1 think, sir, 1 may already venture to hail you as Deem- 
ster of Man.” 

Thorkell cantered home in great elevation of soul. The 
mile-stones fell behind him one after one, and he did not feel 
the burden of the way. His head was on his breast; his body 
was bent over his saddle-bow; again and again a trill of light 
laughter came from his lips. Where were his dreams now, his 
omens, his spells, and the power of the evil eye? He was 
judge of his island. He was master of his fate. 

Passing through St. John’s, he covered the bleak top of the 
hill, and turned down toward the shady copse of Kirk Michael. 
Where the trees were thickest in the valley he drew rein by a 
low, long house that stood back to the road. It was the resi- 
dence of the bishop of the island, but it was now empty. The 
bishopric had been vacant these five years, and under the heavy 
rains from the hills and the strong winds from the sea the old 
house had fallen into decay. 

Thorkell sat in the saddle under the tall elms in the dim 
light, and his mind was busy with many thoughts. His mem- 
ory went back with something akin to tenderness to the last 
days of old Ewan his father; to his brother, Gilcrist, and then, 
by a sudden transition, to the incidents of that morning at Cas- 
tle Rushen. How far in the past that morning seemed to be! 

The last rook had cawed out its low, guttural note, and the 
last gleam of daylight died off between the thick boughs of the 
dark trees that pattered lightly overhead, as Thorkell set off 
afresh. 

When he arrived at Ballamona the night was dark. The 
archdeacon was sitting with his daughter, who had not left her 
room that day. Thorkell, still booted and spurred, ran like a 


THE DEEMSTER. 


29 


squirrel up the stairs and into the bedroom. In twenty hot 
words that were fired off like a cloud of small shot from a 
blunderbuss, Thorkell told what had occurred. His wife’s 
white face showed no pleasure and betrayed no surprise. Her 
silence acted on Thorkell as a rebuke, and when her eyes rest- 
ed on his face he turned his own eyes aside. The archdeacon 
was almost speechless, but his look of astonishment was elo- 
quent, and when Thorkell left the room he followed him out. 

At supper the archdeacon’s manner was that of deep amity. 

“ They are prompt to appoint a Deemster,” he said. “ Has 
it not struck you as strange that the bishopric has been vacant 
so long?” 

Thorkell laughed a little over his plate, and answered that 
it was strange. 

“ May be it only needs that a name should be suggested,” 
continued the archdeacon. “ That is to say, suggested by a 
man of influence, a man of position — by the Deemster, for in- 
stance.” 

“Just that,” said Thorkell, with a titter. 

Then there was an interchange of further amity. When the 
two men rose from the table the archdeacon said, with a con- 
scious smile, “ Of course, if you should occur — if you should 
ever think — if, that is, the Deemster should ever suggest a 
name for the bishopric — of course, he will remember that — 
that blood, in short, is thicker than water — ta fuill ny s’chee 
na ushtey , as the Manxman says.” 

“ I will remember it,” said Thorkell, in a significant tone, 
and with a faint chuckle. 

Satisfied with that day’s work, with himself, and with the 
world, Thorkell then went off to bed, and lay down in peace 
and content, and slept the sleep of the just. 

In due course Thorkell Mylrea became Deemster Ballamona. 

He entered upon his duties after the briefest study of the 
statute laws. A Manx judge dispensed justice chiefly by the 
Breast Laws, the unwritten code locked in his own breast, and 
supposed to be handed down from Deemster to Deemster. 
The popular superstition served Thorkell in good stead: there 
was none to challenge his knowledge of jurisprudence. 

As soon as he was settled in his office he began to make in- 
quiries about his brother Gilcrist. He learned that after leav- 
ing Cambridge Gilcrist had taken deacon’s orders, and had be- 
come tutor to the son of an English nobleman, and afterward 
chaplain to the nobleman’s household. Thorkell addressed 
him a letter, and received a reply, and this was the first inter- 
course of the brothers since the death of old Ewan. Gilcrist 


30 


THE DEEMSTER. 


had lately married; he held a small living on one of the remote 
moors of Yorkshire; he loved his people and was beloved by 
them. Thorkell wrote again and again, and yet again, and 
his letters ran through every tone of remonstrance and en- 
treaty. The end of it was that the Deemster paid yet another 
visit to the lady deputy at Castle Rushen, and the rumor 
passed over the island that the same potent influence that 
had made Thorkell a Deemster was about to make his brother 
the Bishop of Man. 

Then the archdeacon came down in white wrath to Balla- 
mona, and reminded his son-in-law of his many obligations, 
touched on benefits forgot, hinted at dark sayings and darker 
deeds, mentioned, with a significant accent, the girl Mally 
Kerruish, protested that from causes not to be named he had 
lost the esteem of his clergy and the reverence of his flock, and 
wound up with the touching assurance that on that very morn- 
ing, as he rode from Andreas, he had overheard a burly Manx- 
man say to the tawny-headed fellow who walked with him-- 
both of them the scabbiest sheep on the hills: 

“ There goes the pazon that sold his daughter and bought 
her husband. ” 

Thorkell listened to the torrent of reproaches, and then said 
quietly, as he turned on his heel: “ Near is my shirt, but nearer 
is my skin.” 

The Deemster's wife held up her head no more. After the 
christening she rarely left her room. Her cheeks grew thin- 
ner, paler they could not grow, and her meek eyes lost their 
faint luster. She spoke little, and her interest in life seemed 
to be all but gone. There was the same abject submission to 
her husband, but she saw less of him day by day. Only the 
sight of her babe, when Kerry brought it to be nursed, re- 
stored to her face the light of a fleeting joy. If it stayed too 
long at her breast, if it cried, if its winsome ways made her to 
laugh outright, the swift recoil of other feelings saddened her 
to melancholy, and she would put the child from her with a 
sigh. This went on for several months, and meantime the 
Deemster was too deeply immersed in secular affairs to make 
serious note of the shadow that hung over his house. “ Goll 
sheese ny lliiargagh — she's going down the steep places,'' said 
Kerry. 

It was winter when Gilcrist Mylrea was appointed to reach 
the island, but he wrote that his wife's health was failing her, 
that it was not unlikely that she was to bear a child, and that 
he preferred to postpone his journey until the spring. Before 
the gorse bushes on the mountains had caught their new spears 


THE DEEMSTER. 


31 


of green, and before the fishermen of Peeltown had gone down 
to the sea for their first mackerel, Thorkell’s wife was lying in 
her last illness. She sent for her husband and bade him fare- 
well. The Deemster saw no danger, and he laughed at her 
meek adieu. She was soon to be the mother of another of his 
children — that was all. But she shook her head when he ral- 
lied her, and when he lifted the little creeping, cooing, bab- 
bling Ewan from the floor to his mother’s bed, and laughed 
and held up his long, lean hairy finger before the baby face 
and asked the little one with a puff how he would like a little 
sister, the white face on the pillow twitched and fell, and the 
meek eyes filled, and the shadow was over all. 

“ Good-bye, Thorkell, and for baby’s sake — ” 

But a shrill peal of Thorkell’s laughter rang through the 
chamber, and at the next instant he was gone from the room. 

That day the wife of the Deemster passed beyond the sor- 
rows of the life that had no joys. The angels of life and death 
had come with linked hands to the new homestead of Balla- 
mona, and the young mother had died in giving birth to a girl. 
When the Deemster heard what had happened his loud scream 
rang through every room of the house. His soul was in fer- 
ment; he seemed to be appalled and to be stricken not with 
sorrow, but with fright and horror. 

“ She’s dead; why, she’s dead, she’s dead,” he cried, hys- 
terically; “ why did not somebody tell me that she would die?” 

The Deemster buried his wife by the side of old Ewan, un- 
der the elder-tree that grew by the wall of the church-yard 
that stands over by the sea. He summoned no mourners, and 
few stood with him by the open grave. During the short 
funeral his horse was tied to the cross- timbers of the lych- 
gate, and while the earth was still falling in hollow thuds from 
Jhe sexton’s spade Thorkell got into the saddle and rode away. 
Before sunset he waited by the wooden landing jetty at Derby 
Haven. The old sea tub, the “ King Orry,” made the port 
that day, and disembarked her passengers. Among them was 
the new Bishop of Man, Gilcrist Mylrea. He looked much 
older for the six years he had been away. His tall figure 
stooped heavily; his thick hair fell in wavelets on his shoul- 
ders, and was already sprinkled with gray; his long cheeks 
were deeply lined. As he stepped from the boat on to the 
jetty he carried something very tenderly in his arms. He 
seemed to be alone. 

The brothers met with looks of constraint and bewilder- 
ment. 

“ Where is your wife?” asked Thorkell, 


32 


THE DEEMSTER. 


44 She is gone/’ said Gilcrist. “ I have nothing left of her 
but this,” and he looked down at the burden at his breast. 

It was a baby boy. ThorkelFs face whitened, and terror 
was in his eyes. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE MANXMAN ’S BISHOP. 

Gilcrist Mylrea had been confirmed bishop, and conse- 
crated in England; but he had to be installed in his cathedral 
church at Peeltown with all the honors of the insular decrees. 
The ceremony was not an imposing one. Few of the native 
population witnessed it. The Manxman did not love the 
Church with a love too fervent. “ Pazon, pazon,” he would 
say, “ what can you expect from the like o’ that? Never no 
duck wasn’t hatched by a drake.” 

It was no merit in the eyes of the people that the new bish- 
op was himself a Manxman. “Aw, man,” they would say, 
“ I knew his father,” and knowledge of the father implied a 
limitation of the respect due to the son. 44 What’s his family?” 
would be asked again and again across the hearth that scarcely 
knew its own family more intimately. 44 May be some of the 
first that’s going,” would be the answer, and then there would 
be a laugh. 

The bishop was enthroned by Archdeacon Teare, who filled 
his function with what grace his chagrin would allow. Thor- 
kell watched his father-in-law keenly during the ceremony, 
and more than once his little eyes twinkled, and his lips were 
sucked inward as if he rolled a delectable morsel on his tongue. 
Archdeacon Teare was conscious of the close fire of his son-in- 
law’s gaze, and after the installation was done, and the clergy 
that constituted priests and congregation were breaking up, 
he approached the Deemster with a benevolent smile, and said: 
44 Well, Thorkell, we’ve had some disagreements, but we’ll all 
meet for peace and harmony in heaven. ” 

The Deemster tittered audibly, and said : 4 4 I’m not so sure 
of that, though.” 

“No?” said the archdeacon, with elevated eyebrows. 
54 Why, why?” 

44 Because we read in the good book that there will be no 
more tears , archdeacon,” said Thorkell, with a laugh like the 
whinny of a colt. 

The bishop and his brother, the Deemster, got on their 
horses, and turned their heads toward the episcopal palace. 
It was late when they drove under the tall elms of Bishop’s 


THE DEEMSTER. 


33 


Opurt. The old house was lighted up for their reception. 
Half -blind Kerry Quayle had come over from Ballamona, to 
nurse the bishop’s child, and to put him to bed in his new 
home. 44 Och, as sweet a baby-boy as any on the island. I’ll 
go bail, as the old body said/’ said Kerry, and the bishop 
patted her arm with a gentle familiarity. He went up to the 
little room where the child lay asleep, and stooped over the cot 
and touched with his lips the soft lips that breathed gently. 
The dignity of the bishop as he stood four hours before under 
the roof of St. German’s had sat less well on this silent man 
than the tenderness of the father by the side of his motherless 
child. 

Thorkell was in great spirits that night. Twenty times he 
drank to the health of the new bishop; twenty times he re- 
minded him of his own gracious offices toward securing the 
bishopric to one of his own family. Gilcrist smiled and re- 
sponded in few words. He did not deceive himself; his eyes 
were open. He knew that Thorkell had not been so anxious 
to make him a bishop as to prevent a place of honor and 
emolument from going to any one less near to himself than 
his own brother. “ Near is my shirt,” as Thorkell had told 
the archdeacon, 44 but nearer is my skin.” 

Next day the bishop lost no time in settling to his worn*. 
His people watched him closely. He found his palace in a 
forlorn and dilapidated state, and the episcopal demesne, which 
was about a square mile of glebe, as fallow as the rough top 
of the mountains. The money value of this bishopric was 
rather less than £500 a year, but out of this income he set vo 
work to fence and drain his lands, plant trees, and restore his 
house to comfort if not to stateliness. 44 I find my Patmos in 
ruins,” he said, “and that will oblige me to interrupt my 
charity to the poor in some measure.” 

He assumed none of the social dignity of a bishop. He had 
no carriage and no horse for riding. When he made his pas- 
toral visitations he went afoot. The journey to Douglas he 
called crossing the Pyrenees: and he likened the toilsome tramp 
across the heavy curraghs from Bishop’s Court to Kirk An- 
dreas to the passing of pilgrims across a desert. 44 To speak 
truth,” he would say, 44 1 have a title too large for my scant 
fortune to maintain. ” 

His first acts of episcopal authority did not conciliate either 
the populace or their superiors in station. He set his face 
against the contraband trade, and refused communion to those 
who followed it. 44 Och, terrible, wonderful hard on the poor 

2 


34 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


man he is, with his laws agen honest trading^ and his by-laws 
and his customs and his canons and the like o' that messing." 

It was soon made clear that the bishop did not court popu- 
larity. He started a school in each of the parishes by the help 
of a lady, who settled a bounty, payable at the bishop's pleas- 
ure, for the support of the teachers. The teachers were ap- 
pointed by his vicars-general. One day a number of the men 
of his own parish, with Jabez Gawne, the sleek little tailor, 
and Matthias Jubman, the buirdly maltster, at their head, 
came up to Bishop's Court to complain of the school-master 
appointed to Kirk Michael. According to the malcontents 
the school-master was unable to divide his syllables, and his 
home, which was the school-house also, was too remote for the 
convenience of the children. “So we beseech your lordship," 
said little Jabez, who was spokesman, “ to allow us a fit per- 
son to discharge the office, and with submission we will recom- 
mend one.” The bishop took in the situation at a glance; 
Jabez's last words had let the cat out of the bag, and it could 
not be said to be a Manx cat, for it had a most prodigious tail. 
Next day the bishop went to the school, examined master and 
scholars, then called the petitioners together and said, “ I find 
that James Quirk is qualified to teach an English school, and 
I can not remove him; but I am of your opinion that his 
house is in a remote part of the parish, and I shall expect the 
parishioners to build a new school-house in a convenient place, 
near the church, within a reasonable time, otherwise the 
bounty can not be continued to them." The answer stag- 
gered the petitioners, but they were men with the saving 
grace of humor, and through the mouth of little Jabez, which 
twisted into curious lines, they forthwith signified to his lord- 
ship their earnest desire to meet his wish by building their 
school-house within the church-yard. 

Though a zealous upholder of church authority, the bishop 
was known to temper justice with mercy. He had not been a 
month in the diocese when his sumner told him a painful story 
of hard penance. A young girl from near Peeltown had been 
presented for incontinence, and with the partner of her crime 
she had been ordered to stand six Sundays at the door of six 
churches. The man, who was rich, had compounded with the 
archdeacon, paying six pounds for exemption, and being 
thenceforward no more mentioned; but the woman, being 
penniless and appalled at the disgrace before her, had lied 
from the island. The archdeacon had learned her where- 
abouts in England, and had written to the minister of the 
place to acquaint him that she was under the Church's cen- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


35 


sure. The minister, on his part, had laid before her the 
terror of her position if she died out of communion with 
God's people. She resisted all appeals until her time came, 
and then, in her travail, the force of the idea had worked 
upon her, and she could resist it no more. When she rose 
from bed she returned voluntarily to the island, with the sign 
of her shame at her breast, to undergo the penance of her 
crime. She had stood three Sundays at the doors of three 
churches, but her health was feeble, and she could scarcely 
carry her child, so weak was she, and so long the distances 
from her lodging in Peeltown. “ Let her be pardoned the 
rest of her penance," said the bishop. “ The Church's cen- 
sure was not passed on her to afflict her with overmuch shame 
or sorrow." 

It was not until years afterward that the bishop learned the 
full facts of the woman's case, and comprehended the terrible 
significance of her punishment. She was Mally Kerruish. 

The island was in the province of York, and bound by the 
English canons, but the bishop made his own canons and none 
were heard to demur. Some of his judgments were strange, 
but all leaned toward the weaker side. A man named Quayle 
the Gyke, a blusterous fellow, a thorn in the side of every 
official within „* radius or miles, died after a long illness, leav- 
ing nothing to a legitimate son who had nursed him affection- 
ately. This seemed to the bishop to be contrary to natural 
piety, and in the exercise of his authority he appointed the son 
an executor with the others. Quayle the younger lived, as we 
shall see, to return evil ior the bishop's good. A rich man of 
bad repute, Thormod Mylechreest, died intestate, leaving an 
illegitimate son. The bishop ordered the ordinary to put aside 
a sum of money out of the estate for the maintenance and 
education of the child. But Thorkell came down in the name 
of the civil power, reversed the spiritual judgment, ordered 
that the whole belongings of the deceased should be confiscated 
to the Lord of the Isle, and left the base-begotten to charity. 
We shall also see that the bastard returned good for Thor- 
kell's evil. 

The canons and customs of Bishop Mylrea not only leaned 
— sometimes with too great indulgence — to the weaker side, 
but they supposed faith in the people by allowing a voluntary 
oath as evidence, and this made false swearing a terror. Ex- 
cept in the degree of superstition, he encouraged belief in all 
its forms. He trusted an oath implicitly, but no man ever 
heard him gainsay his yea or nay. 

A hoary old dog known as Billy the Gawk, who had never 


36 


THE DEEMSTER. 


worked within living memory, who lived as they said “ on the 
houses,” and frequented the pot-house with more than the 
regularity of religious observance, was not long in finding out 
that Bishop’s Court had awakened from its protracted sleep. 
The bishop had been abroad for his morning’s ramble, and 
sitting on the sunny side of a high turf hedge looking vacantly 
out to sea, he heard -footsteps on the road behind him, and 
then a dialogue, of which this is a brief summary: 

“ Going up to the Coort, eh? Ah, well, it’s plenty that’s 
there to take the edge olf your stomach; plenty, plenty, and a 
rael welcome too. ” 

“ Ah, it’s not the stomach that’s bothering me. It’s the 
narves, boy, the narves, and a drop of the rael stuff is worth a 
Jew’s eye for studdying a man after a night of it, as the say- 
ing is.” 

“ Aw, Billy, Billy, aw well, well, well.” 

The conversation died off on the bishop’s ear in a loud, 
roistering laugh and a low gurgle as under-tone. 

Half an hour later Billy the Gawk stood before the bishop 
inside the gates of Bishop’s Court. The old dog’s head hung 
low, his battered hat was over his eyes, and both his trembling 
hands leaned heavily on his thick blackthorn stick. 

“ And how do you live, my man?” asked the bishop. 

“ I’m getting a bite here, and a sup thgre, and I’ve had ter- 
rible little but a bit o’ barley bread since yesterday morning,” 
said the Gawk. 

“ Poor man, that’s hard fare,” said che bishop; “ but mind 
you call here every day for the future.” 

Billy got a measure of corn worth sixpence, and went 
straightway to the village, where he sold it at the pot-house 
for as much liquor as could have been bought for three half- 
pence. And as Billy the Gawk drank his drop of the real 
stuff he laughed very loud and boasted that he could outwit 
the bishop. But the liquor got into his head, and from laugh- 
ing he went on to swearing and thence to fighting, until the 
innkeeper turned him out into the road, where, under the 
weight of his measure of corn taken in solution, Billy sunk 
into a dead slumber. The bishop chanced to take an evening 
walk that day, and he found his poor pensioner, who fared 
hard, lodged on a harder bed, and he had him picked up and 
carried into the house. Next morning, when Billy awoke and 
found where he was, and remembered what had occurred, an 
unaccustomed sensation took possession of him, and he stole 
away unobserved. The hoary old dog was never seen again at 
Bishop’s Court. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


37 


Bat if Billy never came again his kith and kin came fre- 
quently. It became a jest that the bishop kept the beggars 
from every house hut his own, and that no one else could get 
a beggar. 

He had a hook, which he called his “ Matricula Pauperum,” 
in which he entered the names of his pensioners, with notes of 
their circumstances. He knew all the bits of family history — 
when Jemmy CorkelPs wife was down with lumbago, and when 
Robbie Quirk -was to kill his little pig. 

Billy the Gawk was not alone in thinking that he could out- 
wit the bishop. When the bishop wanted a new pair of boots 
or a new coat, the tailor or shoe-maker came to Bishop’s 
Court, and was kept there until his job of work was finished. 
The first winter after his arrival in his Patmos, he wanted a 
cloak, and sent for Jabez Gawne, the sleek little fox who had 
been spokesman for the conspirators against James Quirk, the 
school-master. Jabez had cut out the cloak, and was prepar- 
ing it for a truly gorgeous adornment when the bishop ordered 
him to put merely a button and a loop on it to keep it to- 
gether. Jabez thereupon dropped his cloth and held up his 
hands where he sat cross-legged on the kitchen dresser, and 
exclaimed with every accent of aggrieved surprise: 

“ My lord, what would become of the poor button-makers 
and their families if every one ordered his tailor in that way?” 

“ How so, Jabez?” 

“ Why, they would be starved outright.” 

“ Do you say so, Jabez?” 

“Yes, my lord, Ido.” 

“ Then button it all over, Jabez,” said the bishop. 

The Deemster was present at that interview, and went away 
from it tittering audibly. 

“ Give to the raven, and he’ll come again,” he muttered. 

“ I forgot that poor Jabez would have his buttons in his 
breeches pocket,” said the bishop. 

The Manxman had not yet made up his mind concerning 
the composite character of Bishop Mylrea, his dignity and his 
humility, his reserve and his simplicity, when a great event 
settled for the Manxman’s heart the problem that had been 
too much for his head. This was no less a catastrophe than a 
general famine. It came upon the island in the second year 
of the bishop’s residence, and was the cause of many changes. 
One of the changes was that the bishop came to be regarded 
by his people with the reverence of Israel for Samuel, and by 
his brother, the Deemster, with the distrust, envy, and, at 
length, mingled fear and hatred of Saul for Israel’s prophet. 


38 


THE DEEMSTER. 


The land of the island had been held under a tenure of 
straw known as the three lives tenure; the third life was every- 
where running out, and the farms reverting to the Lord of the 
Isle. This disheartened the farmers, who lost all interest in 
agriculture, let their lands lie fallow, and turned to the only 
other industry in which they had an interest, the herring fish- 
ing. The herrings failed this season, and without fish, with 
empty barns, and a scant potato crop, caused by a long sum- 
mer of drought, the people were reduced to poverty. 

Then the bishop opened wider the gates of Bishop’s Court, 
which since his coming had never been closed. Heaven seemed 
to have given him a special blessing. The drought had 
parched up the grass even of the damp curragh, and left 
bleached on the whitening mold the poor, thin, dwarfed corn, 
that could never be reaped. But the glebe of Bishop’s Court 
gave fair crops, and when the people cried in the grip of their 
necessity the bishop sent round a pastoral letter to his clergy, 
saying that he had eight hundred bushels of wheat, barley, 
and oats more than his household required. Then there came 
from the north and the south, the east and the west, long 
straggling troops of buyers with little or no money to buy, and 
Bishop’s Court was turned into a public market. The bishop 
sold to those who had money at the price that corn fetched be- 
fore the famine, and in his barn behind the house he kept a 
chest for those who came in at the back with nothing but a 
sack in their hands. Once a day he inspected the chest, and 
when it was low, which was frequently, he replenished it, and 
when it was high, which was rarely, he smiled, and said that 
God was turning away His displeasure from His people. 

The eight hundred bushels were at an end in a month, and 
still the famine continued. Then the bishop bought eight 
hundred other bushels; wheat at ten shillings, barley at six 
shillings, and oats at four shillings, and sold them at half 
these prices. He gave orders that the bushel of the poor man 
was not to be stroked, but left in heaped-up measure. 

A second month went by; the second eight hundred bushels 
were consumed, and the famine showed no abatement. The 
bishop waited for vessels from Liverpool, but no vessels came. 
He was a poor priest, with a great title, and he had little 
money; but he wrote to England, asking for a thousand 
bushels of grain and five hundred kischen of potatoes, and 
promised to pay at six days after the next annual revenue. A 
week of weary waiting ensued, and every day the bishop 
cheered the haggard folk that came to Bishop’s Court with 
accounts of the provisions that were coming; and every day 


THE DEEMSTER. 


39 


they went up on to the head of the hill, and strained their 
bleared eyes seaward for the sails of an English ship. When 
patience was worn to despair, the old “ King Orry ” brought 
the bishop a letter saying that the drought had been general, 
that the famine was felt throughout the kingdom, and that an 
embargo had been put on all food to forbid traders to send it 
from English shores. Then the voice of the hungry multi- 
tudes went up in one deep cry of pain. “ The hunger is on 
us,” they moaned. “ Poor once, poor forever,” they mut- 
tered; and the voice of the bishop was silent. 

Just at that moment a further disaster threatened the peo- 
ple. Their cattle, which they could not sell, they had grazed 
on the mountains, and the milk of the cows had been the 
chief food of the children, and the wool of the sheep the only 
clothing of their old men. With parched meadows and cur- 
raghs, where the turf was so dry that it would take fire from 
the sun, the broad tops of the furze-covered hills were the sole 
resource of the poor. At day-break the shepherd with his six 
ewe lambs and one goat, and the day laborer with his cow, 
would troop up to where the grass looked greenest, and at 
dusk they would come down to shelter, with weary limbs and 
heavy hearts. “ What’s it sayin’,” they would mutter, “ a 
green hill when far from me; bare, bare, when it is near.” 

At this crisis it began to be whispered that the Deemster had 
made an offer to the lord to rent the whole stretch of mount- 
ain land from Ramsey to Peeltown. The rumor created con- 
sternation, and was not at first believed. But one day the 
Deemster with the Governor of the Grand Inquest, drove to 
the glen at Sulby and went up the hill-side. Not long after, 
a light cart was seen to follow the high-road to the glen beyond 
Ballaugh and then turn up toward the mountains by the cart- 
track. The people who were grazing their cattle on the hills 
came down and gathered with the people of the valleys at the 
foot, and there were dark faces and firm set lips among them, 
and hot words and deep oaths were heard. “ Let’s off to the 
bishop,” said one, and then went to Bishop’s Court. Half an 
hour later the bishop came from Bishop’s Court at the head of 
a draggled company of men, and his face was white and hard. 
They overtook the cart half-way up the side of the mountain, 
and the bishop called on the driver to stop, and asked what he 
carried, and where he was going. The man answered that he 
had provisions for the governor, the Deemster, and the grand 
inquest, who were surveying the tops of the mountains. 

The bishop looked round, and his lip was set, and his nos* 


40 


THE DEEMSTER. 


trils quivered. “ Can any man lend me a knife?” he asked, 
with a strained quietness. 

A huge knife was handed to him, such as shepherds carry in 
the long legs of their boots. He stepped to the cart and ripped 
up the harness, which was rope harness, the shafts fell and the 
horse was free. Then the bishop turned to the driver and 
said, very quietly: 

“ Where do you live, my man?” 

“ At Sulby, my lord,” said the man, trembling with fear. 

“ You shall have leather harness to-morrow.” 

Then the bishop went on, his soiled and draggled company 
following him, the cart lying helpless in the cart-track behind 
them. 

When they got to the top of the mountain they could see 
the governor and the Deemster and their associates stretching 
the chain in the purple distance. The bishop made in their 
direction, and when he came up with them he said: 

4 4 Gentlemen, no food will reach you on the mountains to- 
day; the harness of your cart has been cut, and cart and pro- 
visions are lying on the hill-side. ” 

At this Thorkell turned white with wrath, and clinched his 
fists and stamped his foot on the turf, and looked piercingly 
into the faces of the bishop’s followers. 

“ As sure as I’m Deemster,” he said, with an oath, “ the 
man who has done this shall suffer. Don’t let him deceive 
himself — no one, not even the bishop himself, shall step in 
between that man and the punishment of the law.” 

The bishop listened with calmness, and then said: “ Thor- 
kell, the bishop will not intercede for him. Punish him if you 
can.” 

“ And so by God 1 will,” cried the Deemster, and his eye 
traversed the men behind his brother. 

The bishop then took a step forward. “ 1 am that man,” 
he said, and then there was a great silence. 

ThorkelPs face flinched, his head fell between his shoulders, 
his manner grew dogged, he said not a word, his braggadocio 
was gone. 

The bishop approached the governor. “You have no more 
right to rent these mountains than to rent yonder sea,” he 
said, and he stretched his arm toward the broad blue line to 
the west. “ They belong to God and to the poor. Let me 
warn you, sir, that as sure as you set up one stone to inclose 
these true God’s acres I shall be the first to pull that stone 
down.” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


41 


The grand inquest broke up in confusion, and the mount- 
ains were saved to the people. 

It blew hard on the hill-top that day, and the next morning 
the news spread through the island that a ship laden with bar- 
ley had put in from bad weather at Douglas Harbor. “ And 
a terrible, wonderful sight of corn, plenty for all, plenty, 
plenty,” was the word that went round. In three hours’ time 
hundreds of men and women trooped down to the quay with 
money to buy. To all comers the master shook his head, and 
refused to sell. 

“ Sell, man — sell, sell,” they cried. 

“ I can’t sell. The cargo is not mine. I’m a poor man 
myself,” said the master. 

“ Well, and what’s that it’s sayin’, ‘ When one poor man 
helps another poor man, God laughs.’ ” 

The bishop came to the ship’s side and tried to treat for the 
cargo. 

“I’ve given bond to land it all at Whitehaven,” said the 
master. 

Then the people’s faces grew black, and deep oaths rose to 
their lips, and they turned and looked into each other’s eyes 
in their impotent rage. “ The hunger is on us — we can’t 
starve — let every herring hang by its own gill — let’s board 
her,” they muttered among themselves. 

And the bishop heard their threats. “ My people,” he said, 
“ what will become of this poor island unless God averts His 
awful judgments, only God Himself can know; but this good 
man has given his bond, and let us not bring on our heads 
God’s further displeasure.” 

There was a murmur of discontent, and then one long sigh 
of patient endurance, and then the bishop lifted his hands, and 
down on their knees on the quay the people with famished 
faces fell around the tall, drooping figure of the man of God, 
and from parched throats, and hearts well-nigh as dry, sent 
up a great cry to Heaven to grant them succor lest they 
should die. 

About a week afterward, another ship put in by contrary 
winds at Castletown. It had a cargo of Welsh oats bound to 
Dumfries, on the order of the provost. The contrary winds 
continued, and the corn began to heat and spoil. The hun- 
gry populace, enraged by famine, called on the master to sell. 
He was powerless. Then the bishop walked over his “ Pyre- 
nees,” and saw that the food for which his people hungered 
was perishing before their eyes. When the master said “ No ” 
to him, as to others, he remembered how in old time David, 


42 


THE DEEMSTER. 


being an hungered, did that which was not lawful in eating of 
the shewbread, and straightway he went up to Castle Rushen, 
got a company of musketeers, returned with them to the ship's 
side, boarded the ship, put the master and crew in irons, and 
took possession of the com. 

What wild joy among the people! What shouts were heard; 
what tears rolled down the stony cheeks of stern men! 

“ Patience!" cried the bishop. “ Bring the market weights 
and scales. " 

The scales and weights were brought down to the quay and 
every bushel of the cargo was exactly weighed, and paid for at 
the prime price according to the master's report. Then the 
master and crew were liberated, and the bishop paid the ship's 
freight out of his own purse. When he passed through the 
market-place on his way back to the Bishop's Court the people 
followed with eyes that were almost too dim to see, and they 
blessed him in cheers that were sobs. 

And then God remembered His people, and their troubles 
passed away. With the opening spring the mackerel nets came 
back to the boats in shining silver masses, and peace and plenty 
came again to the hearth of the poorest. 

The Manxman knew his bishop now; he knew him for the 
strongest soul in the dark hour, the serenest saint in the hour 
of light and peace. That hoary old dog, Billy the Gawk, 
took his knife and scratched “ B. M.," and the year of the 
Lord on the inside of his cupboard to record the advent of 
Bishop Mylrea. 

A mason from Ireland, a Catholic named Patrick Looney, 
was that day at work building the square tower of the church 
of the market-place, and when he saw the bishop pass under 
he went down on his knees on the scaffold and dropped his 
head for the good man’s blessing. 

A little girl of seven with sunny eyes and yellow hair stood 
by at that moment, and for love of the child's happy face the 
bishop touched her head and said, “ God bless you, my sweet 
child." 

The little one lifted her innocent eyes to his eyes, and an- 
swered, with a courtesy, “ And God bless you, too, sir." 

“ Thank you, child, thank you," said the bishop. “ I do 
not doubt that your blessing will be as good as mine." 

Such was Gilcrist Mylrea, Bishop of Man. He needed all 
his strength and all his tenderness for the trials that were 
to come. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


48 


CHAPTER YI. 

THE COZY NEST AT BISHOP'S COURT. 

The children of the Deemster and bishop spent the first five 

5 ears as one little brood in the cozy nest at Bishop's Court, 
^he arrangement was agreeable to both brothers while it last- 
ed. It left Ballamona a silent place, but the master recked 
little of that. The Deemster kept no company or next to 
none. He dismissed all his domestics except one, and 
Hommy-beg, who had been gardener hitherto, became groom 
as well. The ,Bew Ballamona began to gather a musty odor, 
and the old Ballamona took the moss on its wall and the lichen 
on its roof. The Deemster rose early and went late to bed. 
Much of the day was spent in the saddle passing from town to 
town of his northern circuit, for he held a court twice weekly 
at Ramsey and Peeltown. Toward nightfall he was usually 
back at his house, sitting alone by the fire-place, whether, as 
in the long nights of winter, a peat fire burned there, or, as in 
the summer evenings, the hearth was empty. Hardly a sound 
broke the dead quiet of the solitary place, save when some 
litigious farmer who had caught his neighbor in the act of tres- 
pass brought him there and then for judgment to the Deem- 
ster's house by that most summary kind of summons — the 
force of superior muscles. On such occasions the plaintiff and 
defendant, with their noisy witnesses, would troop into the 
hall with the yaps and snaps of a pack of dogs, and Thorkell 
would twist in his chair and fine one of them, or perhaps both, 
and pocket their money, and then drive them all away dis- 
satisfied, to settle their dispute by other means in the darkness 
of the road outside. 

Meantime Bishop's Court was musical with children's 
voices, and with the patter of tiny feet that ferreted out every 
nook and cranny of the old place. There was Ewan, the 
Deemster's son, a slight, sensitive boy, who listened to you 
with his head aslant, and with absent looks. There was wee 
Mona, Ewan's meek sister, with the big eyes and the quiet 
ways, who liked to be fondled, and would cry sometimes when 
no one knew why. And then there was Daniel — Danny — Dan, 
the bishop's boy, a braw little rogue, with a slice of the man 
in him, as broad as he was long, with tousled fair head and 
face usually smudged, laughing a good deal and not crying 
overmuch, loving a good tug or a delightful bit of a fight, and 
always feeling high disdain at being kissed. And the bishop, 


44 


THE DEEMSTER. 


God bless him! was father and mother both to the motherless 
brood, though Kerry Quayle was kept as nurse. He would 
tell a story, or perhaps sing one, while Mona sat on his knee 
with her pretty head resting on his breast, and Ewan held on 
to his chair with his shy head hanging on his own shoulder, 
and his eyes looking out at the window, listening intently in 
his queer little absent way. And when Dan, in lordly con- 
tempt of such doings, would break in on song or story, and 
tear his way up the back of the chair to the back of the bishop, 
Mona would be set on her feet, and the biggest baby of the 
four there present would slide down on to his hands and knees 
and creep along the floor with the great little man astride 
him, and whinny like a horse, or perhaps bark like a dog, and 
pretend to leap the four-bar gate of the baby's chair tumbled 
down on its side. And when Dan^would slide from his saddle, 
and the restless horseman would turn coachman and tug the 
mane of his steed, and all the bishop's long hair would tumble 
over his face, what shrieks of laughter, what rolling on the 
ground and tossing up of bare legs! And then when supper-time 
came, and the porridge would be brought in, and little Mona 
would begin to whimper because she had to eat it, and Ewan 
to fret because it was barley porridge and not oaken cake, and 
Dan to devour his share with silent industry, and then bellow 
for more than was good for him, what schemes the good bishop 
resorted to, what promises he made, what crafty tricks he 
learned, what an artful old pate his simple head suddenly be- 
came! And then, when Kerry came with the tub and the 
towels, and three little naked bodies had to be bathed, and the 
bishop stole away to his unfinished sermon, and little Mona's 
wet hands clung to Kerry’s dress, and Ewan, standing bolt 
upright in the three inches of water, blubbered while he 
rubbed the sponge over an inch and a half of one cheek, and 
Dan sat on his haunches in the bottom of the tub splashing 
the water on every side, and shrieking at every splash; then 
the fearful commotion would bring the bishop back from the 
dusky room upstairs, where the shaded lamp burned on a table 
that was littered with papers. And at last, when the day’s big 
battle was done, and night's bigger battle began, and three 
night-dresses were popped over three wary heads that dodged 
them when they could, the bishop would carry three sleepless, 
squealing piggies to bed — Mona at his breast because she was 
little, Ewan on his back because he was big, and Dan across his 
shoulders because he could not get to any loftier perch. Pres- 
ently there would be three little pairs of knees by the crib-side, 
and then three little flaxen polls on the pillow, tumbling and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


45 


tossing, and with the great dark head of the bishop shaking 
gravely at them from over the counterpane, and then a hush 
broken by a question lisped drowsily, or a baby rhyme that 
ran a line or two and stopped, and at length the long deep 
quiet and the silence of sleep, and the bishop going off on tip- 
toe to the dusky room with the shaded lamp, and to-morrow’s 
sermon lying half written beneath it. 

And so five tearing, romping years went by, and though they 
were the years of the famine and the pestilence, and of many 
another dark cloud that hung blackest over Bishop’s Court, a 
world of happiness was crowded into them. Then when Ewan 
was six years old, and Danny and Mona were five, and the boys 
were buttoning their own corduroys, the Deemster came over 
from Ballamona and broke up the little nest of humming- 
birds. 

“ Gilcrist,” said Thorkell, “you are ruining the children, 
and I must take my own away from you.” 

The bishop’s brave face grew suddenly white, and when, 
after a pause he said, “No, no, Thorkell, you don’t mean 
that,” there was a tremor in his deep voice. 

“ I do mean it,” said the Deemster. “ Let a father treat 
his children as the world will treat them when they have 
nothing but the world for their father — that’s my maxim, and 
I’ll act up to it with my own.” 

“ That’s hard treatment, Thorkell,” said the bishop, and 
his eyes began to fill. 

“ Spare the rod, spoil the child,” said Thorkell. 

“May be you’re right,” said the bishop, in a quivering 
voice, and he could say no more. 

But the Deemster was as good as his word. Ewan and 
Mona were removed to Ballamona. There they had no nurse, 
and shifted a good deal for themselves. They eat oaten cake 
and barley porridge three times a day, and that was to build 
up their bone and brain; they were bathed in cold water sum- 
mer and winter, and that was to make them hardy; they wore 
frocks with low necks, and that was to strengthen their lungs; 
they went to bed without a light and fell asleep while trem- 
bling in each other’s arms, and that was to make them brave 
and prevent them from becoming superstitious. 

If the spirit and health of the little ones did not sink under 
their Spartan training it was because Nature was stronger than 
custom, and because God is very good to the bruised hearts of 
children. They did not laugh too loud when the Deemster 
was near, and they were never seen to pull his vest, or to tug 
him by his hair, or to ride across his back, which was never 


46 


THE DEEMSTER. 


known to stoop low for their little legs to mount. The house 
was not much noisier, or dirtier, or less orderly for their pres- 
ence; they did not fill it with their voices, or tumble it out of 
its propriety with their busy fingers, as with Cousin Danny’s 
powerful assistance they had filled and tumbled Bishop’s 
Court, until every room in the comfortable old place seemed 
to say to you with a wink and a nod, “ A child lives here; this 
is his own home, and he is master of the whole house.” But 
when they stole away to their own little room at the back, 
where no fire burned lest they should grow “ nesh,” not all 
the masks that were ever made to make life look like a sorry 
tragedy could have hidden the joy that was always wanting to 
break out on their little faces. There they would romp and 
laugh and crow and sing, and Ewan would play at preaching 
with the back of a chair for a pulpit, and his pinafore for sur- 
plice, and Mona of the big eyes sitting on the floor below for 
choir and congregation. And if in the middle of their play 
it happened that all at once they remembered Danny, then 
Ewan’s head would fall aside, and his look in an instant be 
far away, and Mona’s lower lip would hang suddenly, and the 
sunshine would straightway die out of her laughing face. 

When the bishop lost the Deemster’s children he found a 
great void in his heart; but little Danny troubled his big head 
not at all about the change that had taken place. He laughed 
just as loud, and never cried at all, and when he awoke in the 
morning and his cousins were not there, their place forthwith 
knew them no more. In a vague way he missed his play- 
mates, but that only meant that the bishop had to be his play- 
mate even more than before, and the bishop was nothing 
loath. Away they ran through the copse together, these boon 
companions, and if the bishop hid behind a tree, of course 
Danny found him, and if it was Danny that hid, of course the 
bishop searched high and low, and never once heard the merry 
titter that came from behind the gorse bush that was arm’s- 
length away, until, with a burst of laughter, Danny leaped 
out on him like an avalanche. They talked one jargon, too, 
for Danny’s industrious tongue couid not say its w, and it 
made an s of its f. “ How many ’heels has your cart got, 
carter?” “ Sour.” “ Very srosty to-day, master.” “ Well, 
then, come in to the sire.” 

In a strange and unconscious way the bishop developed a 
physical affinity with this sworn ally. When no sound seemed 
to break the silence he could hear the little man’s cry through 
three stout stone walls and up two flights of stairs. If the 
child fell and hurt himself half a mile from the house, the 


THE DEEMSTER. 


4 ? 


bishop at home felt as if he had himself dropped on a sharp 
stone and cut his knee. If he clambered to the top of a high 
wall that was oat: of sight, the bishop in his study felt dizzy. 

But extraordinary a3 was this affinity of the bishop and his 
boy, the intercourse that subsisted between Danny and his 
nurse was yet more marvelous. The bishop had merely a 
prescience of disaster threatening his darling; but Kerry 
seemed, by an exercise of some nameless faculty, to know the 
child's whereabouts at any moment of day or night. Half 
blind at the time of the birth of little Ewan, Kerry Quayle had 
grown stone blind since, and this extraordinary power was in 
truth her second sight. It was confined to Danny, her nursling, 
but over his movementn it was an absolute gift. 

“ Och," she cried, leaping up from the spinning-wheel, 
“ the wee craythur's into the chapel, as the sayin' is." 

“ Impossible!" the bishop answered; “I've only this mo- 
ment locked the door. " 

But Kerry and the bishop went to the chapel to search for 
him, and found the fugitive, who had clambered in through 
an open window, lighting the candle at the reading-desk, after 
washing his black hands in the font. 

“ Aw, now," said Kerry, lifting up her hands and her blind 
face in horror, “ what's that it’s saying, ‘ The little hemlock 
is sister to the big hemlock;' " which was as much as to say 
that the small sin was akin to the great sin, and that little 
Danny, who had been caught in an act of sacrilege, would one 
day be guilty of worse. 

“ Nonsense, woman, nonsense; a child is but a child," said 
the bishop, leading the delinquent away. 

That day — it was Thursday of Whitsun week — Convocation 
was to be held at Bishop's Court, and the clergy had already 
begun to gather in the library that looked west toward the sea. 
To keep Danny out of further mischief the bishop led him to 
his own room, and there he poured water into a bowl and pro- 
ceeded to bathe his eyes, which had latterly shown signs of 
weakness. To do this he had need to remove his spectacles, 
and he set them down on the table by his hand. Danny 
watched these proceedings with a roguish look, and when the 
bishop's face was in the bowl he whipped up the spectacles 
and pushed them down his neck between his frock and his 
breast. With a whir and a puff the bishop shook the water 
from his face and dried it, and when the lash comb had tossed 
back his long hair he stretched his hand out for his specta- 
cles. He could not feel them, and when he looked he could 
not see them, and then he called on Danny to search for them, 


48 


THE DEEMSTER. 


and straightway the rogue was on hands and knees hunting in 
every possible and impossible place. But Danny could not 
find them, not he. Convocation was waiting for its chief, but 
the spectacles could not be found, and the bishop, for all book- 
ish services, was blinder than a bat without them. High and 
low, up and down, on every table, under every paper, into 
every pocket, and still no spectacles. At length the bishop 
paused and looked steadily into the eyes of the little man sit- 
ting on his haunches and tittering audibly. 

“ Where are the glasses?” 

Danny laughed very loud. 

“ Where are my glasses, Danny veg?” 

Danny veg laughed still louder. 

There was nothing to be made of an answer like that, so 
down on his knees went the bishop again to see if the rogue 
had hidden the spectacles beneath the hearth-rug, or under 
the seat of the settle, or inside the shaving-pot on the hearth. 
And all the time Danny, with his hands clasped under his 
haunches, hopped about the room like a frog with great starry 
eyes, and crowed and laughed till his face grew scarlet and l^he 
tears trickled down his cheeks. 

Blind Kerry came to say that the gentlemen wanted to know 
when the bishop would be with them, as the saying was; and 
two minutes afterward the bishop strode into the library 
through a line of his clergy, who rose as he entered, and bowed 
to him in silence when his tall figure bent slightly to each of 
them in turn. 

“ Your pardon, gentlemen, for this delay,” he said, grave- 
ly, and then he settled himself at the head of the table. 

Hardly had the clergy taken their seats when the door of the 
room was dashed open with a lordly bang, and into the muggy 
room, made darker still by twenty long black coats, there shot 
a gleam of laughing sunshine — Danny himself, at a hop, skip, 
and a jump, with a pair of spectacles perched insecurely on 
the sliding bridge of his diminutive nose. 

The archdeacon was there that day, and when the intruder 
had been evicted by blind Kerry, who came in hot pursuit of 
him, he shook his head and looked as solemn and as wise as his 
little russet face would admit, aud said: 

“ Ah, my lord, you’ll kill that child with kindness. May 
you never heap up for yourself a bad harvest!” 

The bishop made no answer, but breathed on the restored 
spectacles, and rubbed them with his red silk handkerchief. 

“ I hold with the maxim of my son-in-law the Deemster/' 



Would skip and caper along the sands . — Page 49 . 



































































































































































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THE DEEMSTER. 49 

the archdeacon continued: 44 let a child be dealt with in his 
father’s house as the world hereafter will deal with him.” 

“ Nay, nay, but more gently,” said the bishop. 44 If he is 
a good man, ten to one the world will whip him — let him re- 
member his father’s house as a place of love.” 

44 Ah, my lord,” said the archdeacon, 44 but what of the in- 
junction against the neglect of the rod?” 

The bishop bent his head and did not answer. 

Once in a way during these early years the bishop took 
Danny across to Ballamona, and then the two little exiles in 
their father’s house, banished from the place of love, would 
rush into the bishop’s arms, Mona at his chin, Ewan with 
hands clasped about his leg and flaxen head against the great 
. seals that hung from his fob pocket. But as for Danny and 
his cousins, and the cousins and Danny, they usually stood 
awhile and inspected each other with that solemnity and aloof- 
ness which is one of the phenomena of child manners, and 
then, when the reserve of the three hard little faces had been 
soitened by a smile, they would forthwith rush at each other 
with mighty clinched fists and pitch into one another for five 
minutes together, amid a chorus of squeals. In this form of 
sal utation Danny was never known to fail, and as he was too 
much of a man to limit his greeting to Ewan, he always pitched 
into Mona with the same masculine impartiality. 

But the time came again when the salutation was unneces- 
sary, for they were sent to school together, and they saw each 
other daily. There was only one school to which they could 
be sent, and that was the parish school, the same that was 
taught by James Quirk, who 44 could not divide his syllables ” 
according to the account of Jabez Gawne, the tailor. 

The parishioners had built their new school-house near the 
church, and it lay about midway between Bishop’s Court and 
Ballamona. It was also about half-way down the road that led 
to the sea, and that was a proximity of never-ending delight. 
After school on the long summer evenings the scholars would 
troop down to the shore in one tumultuous company, the son 
of the bishop with the son of the cobbler, the Deemster’s lit- 
tle girl with the big girl of Jabez, who sent his child on char- 
ity. Bagged and well clad, clean and dirty, and the biggest 
lad 44 rigging ” the smallest, and not caring a ha’porth if his 
name was the name of the Deemster or the name of Billy the 
Gawk. Hand in hand, Danny and Ewan, with Mona between, 
would skip and caper along the sands down to where the gray 
rocks of the Head jutted out into the sea and bounded the 
universe; Mona prattling and singing, shaking out her wavy 


50 


THE DEEMSTER. 


hair to the wind, dragging Danny aside to look at a sea-weed, 
and palling Ewan to look at a shell, tripping down to the 
water’s edge, until the big bearded waves touched her boots, 
and then back once more with a half -frightened, half-affected, 
laughter-loaded scream. Then the boys would strip and bathe, 
and Mona, being only a woman, would mind the men’s 
clothes, or they would shout altogether at the gulls, and Danny 
would mock Mother Carey’s chicken and catch the doleful cry 
of the cormorant, and pelt with pebbles the long-necked bird 
as it sat on the rocks; or he would clamber up over the slip- 
pery sea-weed, across the sharp slate ribs to where the sea- 
pinks grew in the corries and the sea duck laid her eggs, and 
sing out from some dizzy height to where Ewan held his 
breath below and Mona stood crying and trembling on the 
sands. 

What times for Danny! How the lad seemed to swell and 
grow every day of life! Before he was ten he had outgrown 
Ewan by half an inch, and gone through a stand-up fight with 
every ruffian under twelve. Then down among the fishermen 
on the beach, what sport! Knocking about among the boats, 
pulling at the oars like mad, or tugging at the sheets, bailing 
out and pushing off, and riding away over the white breakers 
and shouting for pure devilment above the plash of the water. 

“ Aw, man, it’s all for the happy the lad feels inside,” said 
Billy Quilleash. 

Danny and Billy Quilleash were sworn chums, and the little 
sand-boy learned all the old salt’s racy sayings, and went home 
to Bishop’s Court and fired them off at his father. 

“ There’s a storm coming,” the bishop said one day, look- 
ing up at the scudding clouds. “ Ay, ay,” said Danny, with 
his small eye askew, <ff the long cat’s tail was going off at a 
slant awhile ago, and now the round thick skate yonder is 
hanging mortal low.” “ The wind is rising,” the bishop said 
on another occasion. “ Ay, Davy’s putting on the coppers 
for the parson,” said the young heretic. 

School, too, was only another play-ground to Danny, a little 
less tumultuous but no less delightful than the shore. The 
school-master had grown very deaf since the days when the 
bishop pronounced him qualified to teach an English school. 
This deafness he did his best to conceal, for he had a lively 
recollection of the dissatisfaction of the parishioners, and he 
had a natural unwillingness to lose his bread and butter. But 
his scholars were not easily hoodwinked, and Danny, the dar- 
ing young dog, would play on the master’s infirmity. “ Spell 
me the word arithmetic,” the school-master might ask when 


THE DEEMSTER. 


51 


the boys were ranged about his desk in class. And Danny 
would answer with a face of tragic solemnity, “ Twice one are 
two, twice two are four.” “ Very good,” the school-master 
would reply. fi And now, sir, repeat me your multiplication 
table — twice times.” And then, while the master held his 
head aside, as if in the act of intent listening, and the other 
boys twisted their faces to hide their grins or sniggered open- 
ly, Danny, still with the face of a judge, would repeat a para- 
phrase of the familiar little hymn, “ Jemmy was a Welshman, 
Jemmy was a thief. Jemmy — '' “ Don't speak so fast, sir; 
say your figures more plainly,” the school-master would inter- 
rupt. And Danny would begin again with a more explicit 
enunciation, “Jemmy Quirk was a Welshman, Jemmy — ” 
Then the sniggers and the snorts would rise to a tumult. And 
down would come the master's cane on the desk. “ Silence, 
boys, and let the boy say his table. Some of you big lads 
might take example by him, and be none the worse. Go on, 
Daniel— you are quite right so far — twice five are ten, twice 
six — ' ' 

There was one lad in the school who could not see the 
humor of the situation, a slim, quiet boy, only a little older 
than Danny, but a long way ahead of him in learning, and 
one evening this solemn youngster hung behind when school 
was breaking up, and blurted out the mischief to the school- 
master. He did not get the reception he expected, for in dire 
wrath at the imputation that he was deaf, Mr. Quirk birched 
the informant soundly. Nor did the reward of his treachery 
end with birching. It did not take half an hour for the report 
of both birching and treachery to travel by that swiftest of 
telephones, the school-boy tongue, through that widest of 
kingdoms, the world of school, and the same evening while 
Mona, on her way home, was gathering the blue-bells that 
grew on the lea of the yellow-tipped gorse, and Ewan was chas- 
ing the humming-bee through the hot air that was thick with 
midges, Danny, with a face as white as a haddock, was strid- 
ing alone by a long circuit across the moor, to where a cottage 
stood by the path across the Head. There he bounded in at 
the porch, caught a boy by the coat, dragged him into the 
road, pummeled him with silent vigor, while the lad bellowed 
and struggled to escape. 

In another instant, an old woman hobbled out of the cot- 
tage on a stick, and with that weapon she made for Danny, 
and gave him sundry hard raps on the back and head. 

“ Och, the craythur,” she cried, “ get off with ye — the 
daraon — extraordinary — would the Lord think it now — it's in 


52 


THE DEEMSTER. 


the breed of ye— get off, or I’ll break every bone in your 
skin.” 

Danny paid as little heed to the old woman’s blows as to her 
threats, and was up with his fist for the twentieth time .to 
come down on the craven traitor who bellowed in his grip, 
when all at once a horse’s feet were tramping about their limbs 
where they struggled in the road, and a stern voice from over 
their heads shouted, “ Stop, stop, or must I bring the whip 
across your flanks?” 

It was the Deemster. Danny fell aside on the right of the 
horse, and the old woman and the boy on the left. 

“ What does this mean?” asked the Deemster, turning to 
his nephew; but Danny stood there panting, his eyes like fire, 
his fists clinched, his knuckles standing out like ribs of steel, 
and he made no answer. 

“ Who is this blubbering coward?” asked the Deemster, 
pointing with a contemptuous gesture to the boy half hidden 
by the old woman’s dress. 

“ Coward, is it?” said the woman. “ Coward, you say?” 

“Who is the brat, Mrs. Kerruish?” said the Deemster, 
sharply. 

At that Mrs. Kerruish, for it was she, pulled the boy from 
behind her, plucked off his hat, ran her wrinkled hand over 
his forehead to his hair, and held up his face and said: 

“ Look at him, Deemster; look at him. You don’t come 
this way often, but look at him while you’re here. Did you 
ever see his picture before? Never? Never see a face like 
that? No? Not when you look in the glass. Deemster?” 

“ Get into the house, woman,” said the Deemster, in a low, 
thick tone, and, so saying, he put the spurs to his horse. 

“ As for this young demon here,” said the old woman, push- 
ing the boy back and pointing with her stick at Danny, “ he’ll 
have his heel on your neck yet, Deemster— and remember the 
word I’m saying.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

DANHY THE MADCAP. 

Now, Danny was a great favorite with the Deemster, and 
nothing that he could do was amiss. The spice of mischief in 
the lad made him the darling of the Deemster’s heart. His 
own son disappointed the Deemster. He seemed to have no 
joy in him. Ewan was quiet, and his father thought him a 
milksop. There was more than one sense in which the Deem- 
ster was an indifferent judge of his species, but he found n<? 


THE DEEMSTER. 


53 


difficulty in comprehending the idiosyncrasy of his brother’s 
son. Over the pathetic story of Danny’s maddest prank or 
the last mournful account of his daring devilry, the Deemster 
would chuckle and shake, and roll his head between his shoul- 
ders, then give the boy a slap on his hindmost part, accom- 

E anied by a lusty name, and finally rummage for something in 
is pocket, and smuggle that something into the young 
rascal’s palm. 

Danny would be about fifteen years of age — a lump of a lad, 
and therefore out of the leading-strings of his nurse, Kerry 
Quayle — when he concocted a most audacious scheme, whereof 
Kerry was the chief subject and victim. This had nothing 
less for its aim and object than to get Kerry married to Hom- 
my-beg — the blind woman to the deaf man. Now Hommy 
was a gaunt, raw-boned man, dressed in a rough blue jacket 
and a short gray petticoat. His full and proper name was 
now quite lost. He was known as Hommy-beg, sometimes as 
Hommy-beg-Bill, a name which at once embodied a playful 
allusion to his great physique, and a certain genealogical record 
in showing that he was little Tom, the son of Bill. Though 
scarcely short of stone deaf, he was musical. He played two 
instruments, the fiddle and the voice. The former squeaked 
like a rasp, and the latter thundered like a fog-horn. Away 
to Ballamona Master Danny went, and found Hommy-beg 
thinning a bed of peonies. 

44 Aw, man, the terrible fond she is of the like o’ that swate 
flower,” said the young rogue, who spoke the homespun to 
the life. 44 Aw, dear, the way she smells at them when you 
bring them up for the bishop!” 

44 What, ould Kerry? Smelling, is it? And never a whifi 
of a smell at the breed o’ them!” 

“ Och, no, it’s not the flowers, it’s the man, the man, 
Hommy.” 

44 That’ll do, that’ll do. And blind, too! Well, well.” 

44 But the sware temper that’s at her, Hommy! And the 
coaxing and coaxing of her! And, man alive, the fond she is 
of you! A fine sort of a man anyivays , and A rael good voice 
at him. Aw, extraordinary, extraordinary.” 

44 D’ye raely mane it?” 

44 Mane it? Aw, well, well, and who but you doesn’t know 
it, Hommy?” 

44 Astonishing, astonishing!” 

44 Come up to the Coort and take a cup o’ tay with her.” 
Hommy-beg scratched his head. 44 Is it raely true, Danny 
veg?” 


54 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Fll lave it with you, Hommy,” said Danny, and straight- 
way the young rascal went back to Bishop’s Court, lighted 
upon blind Kerry, and entered upon a glowing description of 
the personal charms of Hommy-beg. 

4 ‘Aw, the good-looking he is, astonishing! My gough! 
You should see him in his Sunday hat, or may be with a frill 
on his shirt, and smiling, and all to that! Terrible dacent 
sort is Hommy-beg!” 

“ What, the loblolly-boy in the petticoat?” 

“ Aw, but the tender-hearted he is for all, and, bless me, 
Kerry woman, the swate he is on you!” 

“ What, the ould red-head that comes singing, as the say- 
ing is?” 

“ Aw, no, woman, but as black as the raven, and the way 
he looks sorrowful like when he comes beside of you. You 
wouldn’t believe it! And, bless me, the rael bad he is to come 
up to the Court and take a cup of tay with you, and the like 
o’ that.” 

“ Do you raely mane it, Danny, my chree?” 

The very next day Hommy-beg arrived at the kitchen door 
of Bishop’s Court in his Sunday hat, in the shirt with the frill 
to it, and with a peony as big as a March cabbage in his fist. 

The end of it all was that Kerry and Hommy-beg were forth- 
with asked in church. Wild as the freak was that made the 
deaf man and the blind woman man and wife, their marriage 
was none the less happy for their infirmities. 

The Deemster heard of the plot on his way to church on 
Sunday morning, and he laughed in his throat all through the 
service, and when the first of the askings was solemnly pro- 
claimed from the reading-desk, he tittered audibly in his pew. 
“ Danny was tired of the woman’s second sight — found it in- 
convenient, very — wanted to be rid of her — good!” he 
chuckled. But not long afterward he enjoyed a jest that was 
yet more to his taste, for his own prime butt of ridicule, the 
Church itself, was then the victim. 

It was an old Manx custom that on Christmas-eve the church 
should be given up to the people for the singing of their native 
carols or carvals. The curious service was known as Oiel 
Verree (the Eve of Mary), and at every such service for the 
last twenty years Hommy-beg, the gardener, and Mr. James 
Quirk, the school-master, had officiated as singers in the 
strange Manx ritual. Great had hitherto been the rivalry be- 
tween these musical celebrities, but word had gone round the 
town that at length their efforts were to be combined in a carol 
which they were to sing together. Dan had effected this ex- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


55 


traord inary combination of talent by a plot which was expected 
to add largely to the amusement of the listeners. 

Hommy-beg could not read a syllable, yet he never would 
sing his carol without having the printed copy of it in his 
hand. Of course Mr. Quirk, the school-master, could read, 
but, as we have seen, he resembled Hommy-beg in being 
almost stone-deaf. Each could hear himself sing, but neither 
could hear another. 

And now for the plot. Master Dan called on the gardener 
at his cottage on the Brew on the morning of the day before 
Chrisfcmas-day, and “ Hominy,” said he, “ it’s morthal 
strange the way a man of your common sense can't see that 
you’d wallop that squeaking ould Jemmy Quirk in a jiffy if 
you’d only consent to sing a ballad along of him. Bless me, 
man alive, it’s then they’d be seeing what a weak, ould 
cracked pot of a voice is at him . 99 

Hommy-beg’s face began to wear a smile of benevolent con- 
descension. Observing his advantage, the young rascal con- 
tinued, “Do it at the Oiel Verree to-night, Hommy. He’ll 
sing his treble, and you’ll sing seconds to him.” 

It was an unlucky remark. The gardener frowned austere- 
ly. “ Me sing seconds to the craythur? No, never!” 

Dan explained to Hommy-beg, with a world of abject 
apologies, that there was a sense in which seconds meant firsts, 
and at length the gardener was mollified, and consented to the 
proposal; but one idea was firmly rooted in his mind — name- 
ly, that if he was to sing a carol with the school-master, he 
must take the best of care to sing his loudest, in order to 
drown at once the voice of his rival, and the bare notion that 
it was he who was singing seconds to such a poor creature as 
that. 

Then Master Danny trotted off to the school-house, where 
he was now no longer a scholar, and consequently enjoyed an 
old boy’s privilege of approaching the master on equal terms, 
and “ Jemmy,” he said, “ it’s morthal strange the way a 
man of your common sense can’t see that you’d wallop that 
squeaking old Hommy-beg in a jiffy if you’d only consent to 
sing a ballad along of him. Do it at Oiel Verree to-night, 
Jemmy, and bless me! that’s the when they’ll be seeing what 
a weak, ould cracked pot of a voice is at the craythur.” 

The school-master fell even an easier prey to the plot than 
the gardener had been. A carol was selected; it was to be the 
aucient Manx carol on the bad w r omen mentioned in the Bible 
as having (from Eve downward) brought evil on mankind. 

Now, Hommy-beg kept his carols pinned against the walls 


56 


THE DEEMSTER. 


of his cottage. The “ Bad Women ” was the carol which was 
pinned above the mantel-piece just under the pendulum of the 
clock with the facetious face. It resembled the other prints in 
being worn, crumpled, and dirty; but Hommy-beg knew it by 
its position, and he could distinguish every other carol by its 
place on his walls. 

Danny had somehow got a “ skute ” into this literary mys- 
tery, and after arranging with the school -master the carol that 
was to be sung, he watched Hommy-beg out of his cottage, 
and then went into it under pretense of a friendly call upon 
blind Kerry. Before he left the cottage he had taken down 
the carol that had been pinned above the mantel-piece and 
fixed up another in place of it from the opposite side of the 
room. The substituted carol happened, oddly enough, to be 
a second copy of the carol on 44 Bad Women,” with this rad- 
ical difference; the copy taken from under the clock was the 
version of the carol in English, and the copy put up was the 
version in Manx. Toward ten o’clock that night the church 
bells began to ring, and Hommy-beg looked at the clock, took 
the carol from under the pendulum, put on his best petticoat, 
and went off to church. 

Now, there were to be seasonable rejoicings at the Court on 
the morrow, and Kerry had gone over to help at the Christ- 
mas preparations. Ewan and Mona had always spent their 
Christmas at Bishop’s Court since the day when they left it as 
children. That night they had arrived as usual, and after 
they had spent some hours with Danny in dressing the house 
in a green and red garment of hibbin and hollin, the bishop 
had turned them off to bed. Danny’s bedroom was the little 
crib over the library, and Ewan’s was the room over that. 
All three bade the bishop good-night and went into their 
rooms. But Danny did not go to bed; he listened until he 
heard the bishop in the library twisting his chair and stirring 
the peats, and then he whipped off his boots and crept up- 
stairs to Ewan’s room. There in bated breath he told of the 
great sport that was to come off at the Oiel Verree, announced 
his intention of going, and urged Ewan to go with him. They 
could just jump through the little window of his room and 
light on the soft grass by the library wall, and get in again by 
the same easy means. No one would know that they had been 
out, and what high, jinks they must have! But no, Ewan was 
not to be persuaded, and Danuy set off alone. 

Hommy-beg did not reach the church until the parson’s ser- 
mon was almost over. Prayers had been said in a thin con- 
gregation, but no sooner were they done than crowds of young 


THE DEEMSTER. 


5? 


men and maidens trooped down the aisles. The young women 
went up into the gallery, and. from that elevation they shot 
down at their bachelor friends large handfuls of pease. To 
what ancient spirit of usage, beyond the ancient spirit of mis- 
chief, the strange practice was due, we must be content to 
leave, as a solemn problem, to the learned and curious anti- 
quaries. Nearly everybody carried a candle, and the candles 
of the young women were adorned with a red ribbon or rosette. 

In passing out of the church the parson came face to face 
with Hommy-beg, who was pushing his way up the aisle. The 
expression on his face was not at the moment one of peculiar 
grace, and he stopped the gardener and said sharply in his 
ear: “ Mind you see that all is done in decency and order, and 
that you close my church before midnight.” 

“ Aw, but the church is the people’s, I’m thinkin’,” said 
Hommy-beg, with a shake of his tousled head. 

“ The people are as ignorant as goats,” said the parson, 
angrily. 

“ Aw, well, and you’re their shepherd, so just make sheeps 
of them,” said Hommy-beg, and he pushed on. 

Danny was there by this time, and, with a face of mighty 
solemnity, he sat on the right of Hommy-beg, and held a can- 
dle in his left hand. When everything was understood to be 
ready, and Will-as-Thorn, the clerk, had taken his station i re- 
side the communion rail, the business of the Oiel Yerree begun. 
First one man got up and sung a carol in English; then an- 
other sung a Manx carol. But the great event of the night 
was to be the carol sung by the sworn enemies and rivals, 
Hommy-beg and Mr. James Quirk. 

At last the time came for these worthies. They rose from 
opposite sides of the church, eyed each other with severe looks, 
stepped out of their pews and walked down the aisle to the 
door of the porch. Then they turned about in silence, and, 
standing side by side, faced the communion. 

The tittering in the gallery and whispering in the body were 
audible to all except the persons who were the cause of both. 
“Hush, hush, man alive, that’s him, that’s him.” “Bless 
me, look at Hommy-beg and the petticut, and the handker- 
cher pinnin’ round his throat.” “Aw, dear, it’s what he’s 
used of.” “A regular Punch and Judy.” 

Danny was exerting himself at that moment to keep order 
and silence. “ Hush, man, let them make a start for all.” 

The carol the rivals were about to sing contained some thirty 
rerses. It was an ancient usage that after each verse the carol 


58 


THE DEEMSTER. 


singers should take a long stride toward the communion. By 
the time the carol of “ Bad Women ” came to an end the carol 
singers must, therefore, be at the opposite end of the church. 

There was now a sublime scorn printed on the features of 
Mr. Quirk. As for Hommy-beg, he looked, at this last in- 
stant, like a man who was rather sorry than otherwise for his 
rash adversary. 

“ The rermantic they’re looking,” whispered a girl in the 
gallery to the giggling companion beside her. 

Expectation was at its highest when Hommy-beg thrust his 
hand into his pocket and brought out the printed copy of the 
carol. Hommy unfolded it, glanced at it with the air of a 
conductor taking a final look at his score, nodded his head at 
it as if in approval, and then, with a magnanimous gesture, 
held it between himself and Mr. Quirk. The school-master 
in turn glanced at it, glanced again, glanced a third time at 
the paper, and up into the face of Hommy-beg. 

Anxiety was now on tiptoe. “ Hush, d’ye hear, hush,” 
whispered Danny from his pew; “ hush, man, or it’s spoiling 
it all you’ll be, for sure. ” 

At the moment when Mr. Quirk glanced into the face of 
Hommy-beg there was a smile on that countenance. Mr. 
Quirk mistook that smile. He imagined he saw a trick. The 
school-master could read, and he perceived that the carol which 
the gardener held out to him was not the carol for which he 
had been told by Master Danny to prepare. They were, by 
arrangement, to have sung the English version of “ Bad 
Women.” This was the Manx version, and though the meter 
was the same, it was always sung to a different tune. Ah! 
Mr. Quirk understood it all! The monster wanted to show 
that he, James Quirk, school-master, could only sing one carol; 
but, as sure as his name was Jemmy, he would be equal with 
him! He could sing this Manx version, and he would. It 
was now Mr. Quirk’s turn to smile. 

“Aw, look at them — the two of them — grinnin’ together 
like a pair of old gurgoils on the steeple!” 

At a motion of the gardener’s hand, intended to beat the 
time, the singers began. Hommy-beg sung the carol agreed 
upon— the English version of “ Bad Women.” Mr. Quirk 
sung the carol they held in their hands — the Manx version of 
“ Bad Women.” Neither heard the other, and to dispel the 
bare notion that either was singing seconds, each bawled at 
the utmost reach of his lung power. To one tune Hommy- 
beg sung: 


THE DEEMSTER. 


59 


“ Thus from the days of Adam 
Her mischief you may trace.” 

And to another Mr. Quirk sung: 

“ She ish va’n voir ain ooilley 
Son v’ee da Adam ben.” 

Such laughter! How the young women in the gallery lay 
back in their seats with hysterical shrieks! How the young 
fellows in the body made the sacred edifice ring with guffaws! 
But the singers, with eyes steadfastly fixed on the paper, heard 
nothing but each his own voice. 

Three verses had been sung, and three strides made toward 
the communion, when suddenly the laughter and shouting of 
the people ceased. All eyes had turned toward the porch. 
There the bishop stood, with blank amazement printed on his 
face, his head bare, and one hand on the half-opened door. 

If a specter had appeared the consternation had scarcely 
been greater. Danny had been rolling in his pew with uncon- 
strained laughter, but at sight of the bishop his candle fell 
from his hand and sputtered on the book-rail. The bishop 
turned about, and before the people had recovered from their 
surprise he was gone. At the next moment everybody got up 
without a word and left the church. In two minutes more 
not a soul remained except Hommy-beg and Mr. Jemmy 
Quirk, who, with eyes riveted on the printed carol in their 
hands, still sung lustily, oblivious of the fact that they had no 
audience. 

When Danny left the church that night it was through the 
lancet window of the vestry. Dropping on the turf at the 
north-east of the church, he leaped the wall that divided the 
church-yard from a meadow on the north, and struck upon a 
path that went round to Bishop’s Court by way of the cliff 
head. The path was a long one, but it was lonesome, and its 
lonesomeness was no small merit in Danny’s view that night. 
The bishop must return to the Court by the high- way through 
the village, and the bishop must be in front of him. 

The night was dark and dumb, and, laden with salt scent, 
the dank vapor floated up from the sea. Danny walked 
quickly. The deep boom of the waters rolling on the sand 
below came up to him through the dense air. .Late as was the 
hour, he could hear the little sand-piper screaming at Orris 
Head. The sea-swallow shot over him too, with its low, 
mournful cry. Save for these sounds, and the quick beat of 
his own feet, all was still around him. 

Beneath his stubborn bit of skepticism Danny was super- 


60 


THE DEEMSTER. 


stitious. He was full to the throat of fairy lore and stories of 
witchcraft. He had learned both from old Billy Quilleash and 
his mates as they sat barking their nets on the shore. And 
that night the ghostly memories would arise, do what he 
might to keep them down. To banish them Danny began to 
whistle, and, failing to enliven himself much by that exercise, 
he began to sing. His selection of a song was not the hap- 
piest under the circumstances. It was the doleful ballad of 
“ Myle Charaine." Danny sung it in Manx, but here is a 
stave of it in English: 

“ Oh, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold? 

Lone, lone, you have left me here; 

Oh, not in the Curragh, deep under the mold — 

Lone, lone, and void of cheer.” 

He had come up to Bishop's Court on the sea front, and 
there the bishop's library stood out from the body of the old 
house, between the chapel porch and the kitchen offices. A 
light was in the library, and passing over the soft grass with 
the soft flight of a lapwing, Danny peered in at the curtain- 
less window. The familiar room was empty. On the hearth 
a turf fire burned without flame, and bathed the book-incased 
walls in a rosy red. The bishop's easy-chair, in its white cov- 
ering, stood at one side of the ingle, his slippers in front of it; 
and beside it, on the little three-legged mahogany table, were 
the ink-horn and the long quill, and the bishop’s four-cor- 
nered library cap. The door stood ajar, and the two candles 
in the two brass brackets at each side of the fire-place were 
tipped by their extinguishers. 

The bishop had not returned; but the faint smile of triumph 
which at that thought rested like a ray of pale sunshine on 
Danny's face suddenly vanished. In a lad's vague way Danny 
now realized that it had not been merely because the night was 
dark and the road lonely that he had whistled and sung. He 
hung his head where he stood in the night, and as if by an in- 
voluntary movement he lifted his cap and fumbled it. 

At the next instant Danny was clambering up the angle of 
the wall to the lead flat that covered the projecting part of the 
library. From this lead flat there opened the window of his 
own bedroom, and in a moment he was striding through it. 
All was darkness within, but he needed no light to see his way 
in that room. He knew every crib and corner; the place 
where he kept his fishing lines, the nail from which his moth 
net hung, the bottle on the drawers in which he had his min- 
nows, and the can with the lid well down that contained the 


THE DEEMSTER. 


01 


newts that were the terror of all the women in the house. If 
Danny had been as blind as old Kerry he could have found 
everything his room had in it, except, perhaps, his breeches, 
or his shirt, or his other coat, or that cap that was always get- 
ting itself lost, and of course no sight and no light would help 
a lad to find things like these. 

Hardly had Danny taken a step into his room before he 
realized that some one had been there since he left it. Derry, 
his white-eyed colly, who had been lying on the bed, dropped 
on the floor, and frisked about him. “ Down, Derry, down!” 
he whispered, and for a moment he thought it might have 
been Derry that had pushed open the door. But the dog's 
snout could not have turned down the counterpane of the bed, 
or opened the top drawer that held the fishing flies, or rum- 
maged among the long rods in the corner. The counterpane 
lay double, the drawer stood open, the rods were scattered — 
some one had been there to look for him, and, not finding him, 
had tried to find a reason for his absence, and that some one 
had either come into the room in the dark, or — been blind. 

“ Aw, it's always Kerry that's in it,'' Danny told himself, 
and with an unpleasant remembrance of Kerry's strange 
faculty, whereof he was the peculiar victim, he reflected that 
his race home had been vain. Then on the instant Danny 
found himself concocting a trick to defeat appearances. He 
had a foot on the stairs to carry out his design when he heard 
the door at the front of the house open and close, and a fa- 
miliar step pass through the hall. The bishop had returned. 
Danny waited and listened. Now there was talking in the 
library. Danny's quick ear could scarcely distinguish the 
words, but the voices he could not mistake — they were the 
voices of the bishop and blind Kerry. With a stealthy stride 
Danny went up to Ewan's room. Ewan was sleeping. Feel- 
ing hot and cold together, Danny undressed and turned into 
bed. Before he had time to bury his head under the clothes 
he heard the bishop on the stairs. The footsteps passed into 
the room below, and then after an interval they were again on 
the stairs. In another moment Danny knew, though of course 
his eyes were fast shut, and he was sleeping most profoundly, 
that the bishop with a lighted candle in his hand was leaning 
over him. 

It would wrong the truth to say that Master Danny's slum- 
ber was disturbed that night; but next morning when the boys 
awoke together, and Ewan rose on his elbow with a puzzled 
gaze at his unexpected bedfellow, Danny sidled out of the bed 
on to the floor, and, without looking too much into Ewan's 


62 


THE DEEMSTER. 


face, he began his toilet, as was his wont, by putting on his 
cap. He had got this length, and was standing in cap and 
shirt, when he blurted out the mischief of last night's advent- 
ure, the singing, the sudden appearance of the bishop, the race 
home along the cliff, and the coming up to bed. “ But you 
won't let on, Ewan, will you?" he said. Ewan looked at 
that moment as if the fate of the universe hung on his an- 
swer, but he gave the promise that was required of him. Then 
the boys went down-stairs and found Mona, and imparted the 
dread secret to her. Presently the bishop came in to break- 
fast with a face that was paler than usual, and more than 
ordinarily solemn. 

“ Danny," he said, “ why did you not sleep in your own 
bed last night, my boy?" 

“ I slept with Ewan, father," Danny answered, promptly. 

The bishop said no more then, and they all sat down at the 
table. 

“And so you two boys went to bed together — together f” 
he said, and, with a dig of emphasis on his last word, repeat- 
ed, he looked at Ewan. 

Ewan's face crimsoned, and his tongue faltered, “ Yes, 
uncle." 

The bishop's eyes fell. “ Boys," he said, in another tone, 
“ would you think it? I have done you a great wrong." 

The boys were just then most intent on the table-cloth. 

“ You must know," the bishop went on, “ that there was a 
most unseemly riot at the Oiel Verree, and all night long I 
have been sore troubled by the bad thought that Danny was in 
the midst of it." 

The boys held their heads very low over their plates, and 
Mona's big eyes filled visibly. Danny's impulse was to blurt 
out the whole mischief there and then, but he reflected that to 
do so would be to charge Ewan with falsehood. Ewan, on 
his part, would have confessed to the deception, but he knew 
that this would mean that Danny must be punished. The 
boy's wise head could see no way out of a tangle like that. 
The breakfast was the quietest ever eaten on a Christmas 
morning at Bishop's Court, and, little as the talking was, the 
bishop, strangely enough, did it all. But when they rose from 
the table, and the boys slunk out of the room with most por- 
tentous gravity, Mona went up to the bishop with a face full 
of liquid grief, and turning the whole depths of her great 
troubled eyes upon him, the little maiden said, “ Ewan didn't 
mean to tell you what wasn't true — and Cousin Danny didn't 


THE DEEMSTER. 


63 


intend to deceive — but he was — that is, Danny — 1 mean — 
dear uncle, you won’t — ” 

“ You mean that Danny was at the Oiel Verree last night — 
1 know it, child, I know it,” said the bishop, and he patted 
her head and smiled. 

But the bishop knew also that Danny had that day made 
one more step down the steep of life, and left a little ghost of 
his child-self behind him, and in his secret heart the bishop 
saw that shadowy form, and wept over it. 


CHAPTER YIH. 

PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN. 

Now the facts of this history must stride on some six years, 
and in that time the Deemster had lost nearly all the little in- 
terest he ever felt in his children. Mona had budded into 
womanhood, tender, gracious, quiet, a tall, fair-haired maiden 
of twenty, with a drooping head like a flower, with a voice soft 
and low, and the full blue eyes with their depths of love and 
sympathy shaded by long fluttering lashes as the trembling 
sedge shades the deep mountain pool. It was as ripe and 
beautiful a womanhood as the heart of a father might dream 
of, but the Deemster could take little pleasure in it. If Mona 
had been his son, her quiet ways and tractable nature might 
have counted for something; but a woman was only a woman 
in the Deemster’s eyes, and the Deemster, like the Bedouin 
chief, would have numbered his children without counting his 
daughter. As for Ewan, he had falsified every hope of the 
Deemster. His Spartan training had gone for nothing. He 
was physically a weakling; a tall, spare youth of two-and- 
twenty, fair-haired like his sister, with a face as spiritual and 
beautiful, and hardly less feminine. He was of a self-tortur- 
ing spirit, constantly troubled with vague questionings, and 
though in this regard he was very much his father’s son, the 
Deemster held his temperament in contempt. 

The end of all was that Ewan showed a strong desire to 
enter the Church. The Deemster had intended that his son 
should study the law and follow him in his place when his time 
came. But Ewan’s womanly temperament co-existed with a 
manly temper. Into the law he would not go, and the Church 
he was resolved to follow. The bishop had then newly opened 
at Bishop’s Court a training college for his clergy, and Ewan 
sought and obtained admission. The Deemster fumed, but 
his son was not to be moved even by his wrath. This was 
when Ewan was nineteen years of age, and after two more 


64 


THE DEEMSTER. 


years the spirituality of his character overcame the obstacle of 
his youth, and the bishop ordained him at twenty-one. Then 
Ewan was made chaplain to the household at Bishop’s Court. 

Hardly had this been done when Ewan took another step in 
life. With the knowledge of the bishop, but without consult- 
ing the Deemster, he married, being now of age, a pretty child 
of sixteen, the daughter of his father’s old foe, the vicar of the 
parish. When knowledge of this act of unwisdom reached the 
Deemster his last remaining spark of interest in his son ex- 
pired, and he sent Mona across to Bishop’s Court with a curt 
message saying that Ewan and his wife were at liberty, if they 
liked, to take possession of the old Ballamona. Thus he 
turned his back upon his son, and did his best to wipe him out 
of his mind. 

Ewan took his young wife to the homestead that had been 
the place of his people for six generations, the place where he 
himself had been born, the place where that other Ewan, his 
good grandfather, had lived and died. 

More than ever for these events the Deemster became a soli- 
tary man. He kept no company; he took no pleasure. 
Alone he sat night after night in his study at Ballamona, affd 
Ballamona was asleep before he slept, and before it awoke he 
was stirring. His daughter’s presence in the house was no so- 
ciety for the Deemster. She grew beside him like her mothers 
youth, a yet fairer vision of the old days coming back to him 
hour by hour, but he saw nothing of all that. Disappointed 
in his sole hope, his son, whom truly he had never loved for 
love’s sake, but only for his own sorry ambitions, he sat down 
under his disappointment a doubly soured and thrice-hardened 
man. He had grown noticeably older, but his restless energy 
suffered no abatement. Bi-weekly he kept his courts, but few 
sought the law whom the law did not first find, for word went 
round that the Deemster was a hard j udge, and deemed the 
laws in rigor. If men differed about money, they would say, 
“ Och, why go to the Deemster? It’s throwing a bone into 
the bad dog’s mouth,” and then they would divide their 
difference. 

The one remaining joy of the Deemster’s lonely life was 
centered in his brother’s son, Dan. That lusty youth had not 
disappointed his expectations. At twenty he was a braw, 
brown-haired, brown-eyed lad of six feet two inches in stature, 
straight and upright, and with the thews and sinews of an ox. 
He was the athlete of the island, and where there was a tough 
job of wrestling to be had, or a delightful bit of fighting to be 
done, there was Dan in the heart of it. 44 Aw, and middling 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


few could come anigh him/* the people used to say. But 
more than in Dan's great stature and great strength, the little 
Deemster took a bitter pleasure in his daring irreverence for 
things held sacred. In this regard Dan had not improved with 
improving years. Scores of tricks his sad pugnacity devised 
to help the farmers to cheat the parson of his tithe, and it 
added not a little to the Deemster's keen relish of freaks like 
these that it was none other than the son of the bishop who 
perpetrated them. As for the bishop himself, he tried to shut 
his eyes to such follies. He meant his son to go into the 
Church, and, in spite of all outbursts of spirits, notwithstand- 
ing wrestling matches and fights, and even some tipsy broils of 
which rumor was in the air, he entered Dan as a student at 
the college he kept at Bishop's Court. 

In due course the time of Dan's examination came, and then 
all further clinging to a forlorn hope was at an end. The 
archdeacon acted as the bishop's examining chaplain, and more 
than once the little man had declared in advance his conscien- 
tious intention of dealing with the bishop's son as he would 
deal with any other. The examination took place in the library 
bf Bishop's Court, and besides the students and the examiner 
there were some six or seven of the clergy present, and Ewan 
Mylrea, then newly ordained, was among them. It was a 
purely oral examination, and when Dan's turn came the arch- 
deacon assumed his loftiest look, and first tackled the candi- 
date where he was known to be weakest. 

“ I suppose, sir, you think you can read your Greek Testa- 
ment?" 

Dan answered that he had never thought anything about it. 

“ I dare say for all your modesty that you have an idea that 
you know it well enough to teach it," said the archdeacon. 

Dan hadn't an idea on the subject. 

“ Take down the Greek Testament, and imagine that I'm 
your pupil, and proceed to expound it," said the archdeacon. 

Dan took the book from the book-case and fumbled it in his 
fingers. 

“ Well, sir, open at the parable of the tares." 

Dan scratched his big head leisurely, and he did his best to 
find the place. “ So I'm to be tutor — is that it?" he said, 
with a puzzled look. 

“ That is so." 

“ And you are to be the pupil?" 

“ Precisely — suppose yourself my tutor — and now begin." 

At this Ewan stepped out with a look of anxiety. “ Is not 


06 


THE DEEMSTER. 


that a rather difficult supposition, archdeacon?” he said, 
timidly. 

The archdeacon glanced over his grandson loftily, and made 
no reply. 

“ Begin, sir, begin,” he said, with a sweep of his hand to- 
ward Dan, and at that he sat down in the high-backed oak 
chair at the head of the table. 

Then on the instant there came into Dan’s quick eyes a 
most mischievous twinkle. He was standing before the table 
with the Greek Testament open at the parable of the tares, 
and he knew too well he could not read the parable. 

“ When do we change places, archdeacon?” he asked. 

“ We have changed places — you are now the tutor — I am 
your pupil — begin, sir.” 

“Oh! we have changed places, have we?” said Dan, and at 
that he lifted up the archdeacon’s silver- tipped walking-cane 
which lay on the table and brought it down again with a bang. 
“ Then just you get up off your chair, sir,” he said, with a 
tone of command. 

The archdeacon’s russet face showed several tints of blue at 
that moment, but he rose to his feet. Thereupon Dan handed 
him the open book. 

“Now, sir,” he said, “first read me the parable of the 
tares.” 

The clergy began to shuffle about and look into each other’s 
faces. The archdeacon’s expression was not amiable, but he 
took the book and read the parable. 

“ Very fair, very fair indeed,” said Dan, in a tone of mild 
condescension — “ a few false quantities, but very fair on the 
whole. ” 

“ Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is going too far,” said one of 
the clergy. 

“ Silence, sir,” said Dan, with a look of outraged authority. 

Then there was dire confusion. Some of the clergy laughed 
outright, and some giggled under their breath, and some pro- 
tested in white wrath, and the end of it all was that the exam- 
ination came to a sudden termination, and, rightly or wrongly, 
wisely or foolishly, Dan was adjudged to be unfit for the 
ministry of the Church. 

When the bishop heard the verdict his pale face whitened 
visibly, and he seemed to see the beginning of the end. At 
that moment he thought of the Deemster with bitterness. 
This blow to his hopes did not cement the severed lives of the 
brothers. The forces that had been dividing them year by 
year since the days of their father appeared to be drawing 


THE DEEMSTER. 


6? 


them yet wider apart in the lives and fortunes of their chil- 
dren. Each felt that the other was frustrating his dearest ex- 
pectations in his son, and that was an offense that neither 
could forgive. To the Deemster it seemed that the bishop was 
bearing down every ambition of his life, tearing him up as a 
naked trunk, leaving him a childless man. To the bishop it 
seemed that the Deemster was wrecking the one life that was 
more to him than his own soul, and standing between him 
and the heart that with all its follies was dearer than the world 
besides. From this time of Ewan’s marriage and Dan’s dis- 
grace the bishop and the Deemster rarely met, and when they 
passed on the road they exchanged only the coldest salutation. 

But if the fates were now more than ever fostering an un- 
natural enmity between the sons of old Ewan, they were cher- 
ishing at the same time the loves of their children. Never were 
cousins more unlike or more fondly attached. Between Dan, 
the reckless scapegrace, and Mona, with the big, soft eyes and 
the quiet ways, the affection was such as neither understood. 
They had grown up side by side, they had seen each other 
daily, they had scampered along the shore with clasped hands, 
they had screamed at the sea-gulls with one voice, and still they 
were boy and girl together. But once they were stooking the 
barley in the glebe, and, the day being hot, Mona tipped back 
her white sun bonnet, and it fell on her shoulders. Seeing 
this, Dan came stealthily behind and thought very craftily to 
whisk it away unobserved; but the strings by which it was tied 
caught in her hair and tugged at its knot, and the beautiful 
wavy shower fell rip-rip-rippling down her back. The wind 
caught the loosened hair and tossed it about her, and she stood 
up erect among the corn with the first blush on her cheeks 
that Dan had ever brought there, and turned full upon him 
all the glorious light of her deep blue eyes. Then, then, oh, 
then, Dan seemed to see her for the first time a girl no longer, 
but a woman, a woman, a woman! And the mountains be- 
hind her were in one instant blotted out of Dan’s eyes, and 
everything seemed to spin about him. 

When next he knew where he was, and what he was doing, 
behold there were Mona’s rosy lips under his, and she was 
panting and gasping for breath. 

But if the love of Dan and Mona was more than cousinly, 
though they knew it not as yet, the love of Ewan for Dan was 
wonderful and passing the love of women. That pure soul, 
with its vague spiritual yearnings, seemed to have nothing in 
common with the jovial roisterer, always fighting, always 
laughing, taking disgrace as a duck takes water, and losing 


<58 


THE DEEMSTER. 


the trace of it as easily. Twenty times he stood between the 
scapegrace and the bishop, twenty times he hid from the good 
father the follies of the son. He thought for that thoughtless 
head that never had an ache or a care under its abundant 
curls; he hoped for that light heart that hoped for nothing; 
he trembled for the soul that felt no fear. Never was such 
loyalty between man and man since David wept for Jonathan. 
And Ewan’s marriage disturbed this affection not at all, for 
the love he bore to Dan was a brotherly passion for which lan- 
guage has yet no name. 

Let us tell one story that shall show this friendship in its 
double bearings — Ewan’s love and temper and Dan’s heedless 
harshness and the great nature beneath it, and then we will 
pass on with fuller knowledge to weightier matters. 

Derry, the white-eyed colly that had nestled on the top of 
his master’s bed the night Dan sneaked home in disgrace from 
the Oiel Verree, was a crafty little fox, with cunning and 
duplicity bred in his very bones. If you were a tramp of the 
profession of Billy the Gawk, he would look up at you with his 
big, innocent eyes, and lick your hand, and thrust his nose into 
your palm, and the next moment he would seize you by the 
hindmost parts and hold on like a leech. His unamiable 
qualities grew as he grew in years, and one day Dan went on a 
long journey, leaving Derry behind, and when he returned he 
had another dog with him, a great shaggy Scotch colly, with 
bright eyes, a happy phiz, and a huge bush of a tail. Derry 
was at the gate when his master came home, and he eyed the 
new-comer with looks askance. From that day Derry turned 
his back on his master, he would never answer his call, and he 
did not know his whistle from the croak of a corn-crake. In 
fact, Derry took his own courses, and forthwith fell into- all 
manner of dissolute habits. He went out at night alone, in- 
cognito, and kept most unchristian hours. The farmers 
around complained that their sheep were found dead in the 
field, torn and worried by a dog’s teeth. Derry was known to 
be a dog that did not live a reputable life, and suspicion fell 
on him. Dan took the old fox in hand, and thenceforward 
Derry looked out on the world through a rope muzzle. 

One day there was to be a sheep-dog match, and Dan entered 
his Scotch colly. Laddie. The race was to be in the meadow 
at the foot of Slieu Dhoo, and great crowds of people came to 
witness it. Hurdles were set up to make all crooks and cranks 
of difficulty, and then a drift of sheep were turned loose in 
the field. The prize was to the dog that would, at the word 
of its master, gather the sheep together and take them out at 


THE DEEMSTEH, 


the gate in the shortest time. Ewan, then newly married, was 
there, and beside him was his child- wife. Time was called, 
and Dan’s turn came to try the mettle of his Laddie. The 
dog started well, and in two or three minutes he had driven 
the whole flock save two into an alcove of hurdles close to 
where Ewan and his wife stood together. Then at the word 
of his master Laddie set ofl over the field for the stragglers, 
and Dan shouted to Ewan not to stir hand or foot or the sheep 
would be scattered again. Now just at that instant who 
should pop over the hedge but Derry in his muzzle, and quick 
as thought he shot down his head, put up his paws, threw oft' 
his muzzle,, dashed at the sheep, snapped at their legs, and 
away they went in twenty directions. 

Before Ewan had time to cry out, Derry was gone, with his 
muzzle between his teeth. When Dan, who was a perch or 
two up the meadow, turned round and saw what had happened, 
and that his dog’s chances were gone, his anger overcame him, 
and he turned on Ewan with a torrent of reproaches. 

“ There — you’ve done it with your lumbering — curse it.” 

With complete self-possession Ewan explained how Derry 
had done the mischief. 

Then Dan’s face was darker with wrath than it had ever 
been before. 

“ A pretty tale,” he said, and his lip curled in a sneer. He 
turned to the people around. “ Anybody see the dog slip his 
muzzle?” 

None had seen what Ewan affirmed. The eyes of every one 
had been on the two stragglers in the distance pursued by Dan 
and Laddie. 

Now when Ewan saw that Dan distrusted him, and appealed 
to strangers as witness to his word, his face flushed deep, and 
his delicate hostrils quivered. 

“ A pretty tale,” Dan repeated, and he was twisting on his 
heel when up came Derry again, his muzzle 011 his snout, 
whisking his tail, and frisking about Dan’s feet with an ex- 
pression of quite lamb-like simplicity. 

At that sight Ewan’s livid face turned to a great pallor, and 
Dan broke into a hard laugh. 

“ We’ve heard of a dog slipping his muzzle,” he said, “ but 
who ever heard of a dog putting a muzzle on again?” 

Then Ewan stepped from the side of his girl-wife, who stood 
there with heaving breast. His eyes were aflame, but for an 
instant he conquered his emotion, and said, with a constrained 
quietness, but with a deep pathos in liis tone, 44 Dan, do you 
think I’ve told you the truth?” 


70 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Dan wheeled about. “ I think you’ve told me a lie,” he 
said, and his voice came thick from his throat. 

All heard the words, and all held their breath. Ewan stood 
a moment, as if rooted to the spot, and his pallid face whitened 
every instant. Then he fell back, and took the girl-wife by 
the hand and turned away with her, his head down, his very 
heart surging itself out of his choking breast. And, as he 
passed through the throng, to carry away from that scene the 
madness that was working in his brain, he overheard the 
mocking comments of the people. “ Aw, well, well, did ye 
hear that now? — called him a liar, and not a word to say agen 
it.” “ A liar! Och, a liar? aud him a parzon, too!” * Mid-, 
dling chicken-hearted any ways — a liar! Aw, well, well, well!” 

At that Ewan flung away the hand of his wife, and, quiver- 
ing from head to foot, he strode toward Dan. 

“ You’ve called me a liar,” he said, in a shrill voice that 
was like a cry. “ Now, you shall prove your word — you shall 
fight me — you shall, by G-od!” 

He was completely carried away by passion. 

“The parzon, the parzon!” “Man alive, the young par- 
zon !” the people muttered, and they closed around. 

Dan stood a moment. He looked down from his great 
height at Ewan’s quivering form and distorted face. Then he 
turned about and glanced into the faces of the people. In an- 
other instant his eyes were swimming in tears; he took a step 
toward Ewan, flung his arms about him, and buried his head 
in his neck, and the great stalwart lad wept like a little child. 
In another moment Ewan’s passion was melted away, and he 
kissed Dan on the cheek. 

“Blubbering cowards!” “Aw, blatherskites!” “Och, 
man alive, a pair of turtle-doves!” 

Dan lifted his head, and looked around, raised himself to 
his full height, clinched his fists, and said: 

“ Now, my lads, you did your best to, make a fight, and you 
couldn’t manage it. I won’t fight my cousin, and he sha’n’t 
fight me; but if there’s a man among you would like to know 
for himself how much of a coward I am, let him step out — I’m 
ready. ” 

Not a man budged an inch. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE SERVICE ON THE SHORE. 

It was the spring of the year when the examining chaplain 
gave the verdict which for good or ill put Dan out of the odor 


THE DEEMSTER. 


71 


of sanctity. Then in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes he 
haunted the shore where old Billy and his mates were spread- 
ing their nets and barking them in preparation for the herring 
season that was soon to begin. There it was, while stretched 
on the warm shingle, with old Billy Quilleash sitting near, 
smoking his black cutty and mending the meshes broken by 
the dog-fish of last year, that Dan hit on the idea of a new 
course in Jife. This was nothing better or worse than that of 
turning fisherman. He would buy a smack and make old 
Billy his skipper; he would follow the herrings himself, and 
take up his own share and the share of the boat. It would be 
delightful, and, of course, it would be vastly profitable. Every- 
thing looked plain and straight and simple, and though old 
Billy more than half shook his gray head at the project, and 
let fall by several inches his tawny face, and took his pipe out 
of his mouth and cleared his throat noisily, and looked vacant- 
ly out to sea, and gave other ominous symptoms of grave in- 
ternal dubitation, Dan leaped to his feet at the sudden ac- 
cess of new purpose, and bowled ofi in hoi haste to tell the 
bishop. 

The bishop listened in silence at first, and with a sidelong 
look out at the window up to the heights of Slieu Dhoo, and 
when Dan, in a hang-dog manner, hinted at certain new-born 
intentions of reform, there was a perceptible trembling of the 
bishop’s eyelids, and when he gathered voice and pictured the 
vast scheme of profit without loss, the bishop turned his grave 
eyes slowly upon him, and then Dan’s own eyes suddenly fell, 
and the big world began to shrivel up to the pitiful dimensions 
of an orange with the juice squeezed out of it. But the end 
of it all was that the bishop undertook to become responsible 
for the first costs of the boat, and, having made this promise 
with the air of a man who knows too well that he is pampering 
the whim of a spoiled boy, he turned away rather suddenly 
with his chin a thought deeper than ever in his breast. 

What hurry and bustle ensued! What driving away to 
north, south, east, and west, to every fishing port in the island 
where boats were built or sold! At length a boat was bought 
on the chocks at Port le Mary, a thirty-tons’ boat of lugger- 
build, and old Billy Quilleash was sent south to bring it up 
through the Calf Sound to the harbor at Peeltown. 

Then there was the getting together of a crew. Of course, 
old Billy was made skipper. He had sailed twenty years in a 
boat of Kinvig’s with three nets to his share, and half that 
time he had been admiral of the Peeltown fleet of herring 
boats, with five pounds a year for his post of honor. In Dan’s 


72 


THE DEEMSTER. 


boat he was to have four nets by his own right, and one for his 
nephew, Davy Fayle. Davy was an orphan, brought up by 
Billy Quilleash. He was a lad of eighteen, and was to sail as 
boy. There were other four hands — Orennel, the cook; 
Teare, the mate; Corkell, and Corlett. 

Early and late Dan was down at the harbor, stripped to the 
woolen shirt, and tackling any odd job of painting or carpen- 
try, for the opening of the herring season was hard upon 
them. But he found time to run up to the new Ballamona to 
tell Mona that she was to christen his new boat, for it had not 
been named when it left the chocks; and then to the old Bal- 
lamona, to persuade Ewan to go with him on his first trip to 
the herrings. 

The day appointed by custom for the first takings of the 
herring came quickly round. It was a brilliant day in early 
June. Ewan had been across to Slieu Dhoo to visit his father 
for the first time since his marriage, more than half a year 
ago, in order to say that he meant to go out for the night’s 
fishing in Dan’s new boat, and to beg that his young wife, 
who was just then in delicate health, might be invited to spend 
the night of his absence with Mona at the new Ballamona. 
The Deemster complied with a grim grace; Ewan’s young wife 
went across in the early morning, and in the afternoon all 
four, the Deemster and Mona, Ewan and his wife, set off in a 
lumbering, spriugless coach — the first that the island had yet 
seen — to witness the departure of the herring fleet from Peel- 
town, and to engage in that day’s ceremony. 

The salt breath of the sea was in the air, and the light rip- 
pies of the bay glistened through a drowsy haze of warm sun- 
shine. It was to be high water at six o’clock. When the 
Deemster’s company reached Peeltown, the sun was still high 
over Contrary Head, and the fishing boats in the harbor, to 
the number of two hundred, were rolling gently, with their 
brown sails half set, to the motion of the rising tide. 

There was Dan in his guernsey on the deck of his boat, and, 
as the coach drew up near the bottom of the wooden pier, he 
lifted his red cap from his curly head, and then went on to tie 
a bottle by a long blue ribbon to the tiller. There was old 
Billy Quilleash in his sea-boots, and there was Davy Fayle, a 
shambling sort of lad, long rather than tall, with fair hair 
tangled over his forehead, and a face which had a simple, 
vacant look that came of a lagging lower lip. Men on every 
boat in the harbor were washing the decks, or bailing out the 
dingy, or laying down the nets below. The harbor-master was 
on the quay, shouting to this boat to pull up or to that one to 


THE DEEMSTER. 


7‘d 


lie back. And down on the broad sands of the shore were 
men, women, and children in many hundreds, sitting and lying 
and lounging about an empty boat with a hole in the bottom 
that lay high and dry on the beach. The old fishing town 
itself had lost its chill and cheerless aspect, and no longer 
looked hungrily out over miles of bleak sea. Its blind alleys 
and dark lanes, its narrow, crabbed, crooked streets were bright 
with little flags hung out of the little stufied-up windows, and 
yet brighter with bright faces that hurried to and fro. 

About five o’clock, as the sun was dipping seaward across 
the back of Contrar} T , leaving the brown sails in the harbor in 
shade, and glistening red on the sides of the cathedral church 
on the island-rock that stood twenty yards out from the main- 
land, there was a movement of the people on the shore toward 
the town behind them, and of fisher-fellows from their boats 
toward the beach. Some of the neighboring clergy had come 
down to Peeltown, and the little Deemster sat in his coach, 
thrown open, blinking in the sun under his shaggy gray eye- 
brows. But some one was still looked for, and expectation 
was plainly evident in every face until a cheer came" over the 
tops of the houses from the market-place. Then there was a 
general rush toward the mouth of the quay, and presently 
there came laboring over the rough cobbles of the tortuous 
Castle Street, flanked by a tumultuous company of boys and 
men, bareheaded women, and children, who hallooed and 
waved their arms and tossed up their caps, a rough-coated 
Manx pony, on which the tall figure of the bishop sat. 

The people moved on with the bishop at their head until they 
came to the beach, and there, at the disused boat lying dry on 
the sand, the bishop alighted. In two minutes more every 
fisherman in the harbor had left his boat and gathered with his 
fellows on the shore. Then there began a ceremony of in- 
finite pathos and grandeur. 

In the open boat the pale-faced bishop stood, his long hair, 
sprinkled with gray, lifted gently over his drooping shoulders 
by the gentle breeze that came with its odor of brine from the 
sea. Around him on their knees on the sand were the tawny- 
faced, weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots and guern- 
seys, bareheaded, and fumbling their soft caps in their hard 
hands. There, on the outside, stood the multitude of men, 
women, and young children, and on the skirts of the crowd 
stood the coach of the Deemster, and it was half encircled by 
the pawing horses of some of the black-coated clergy. 

The bishop began the service. It asked for the blessing ol 
God on the fishing expedition which was about to set out. 


74 


THE DEEMSTER. 


First came the lesson, “ And God said, let the waters bring 
forth abundantly ;" and then the story of Jesus in the ship, 
when there arose a great tempest while He slept, and His dis- 
ciples awoke Him, and He arose and rebuked the waves; and 
then that other story of how the disciples toiled all night and 
took nothing, but let down their nets again at Christ's word, 
and there came a great multitude of fishes, and their nets 
broke. “ Restore and continue to us the harvest of the sea," 
prayed the bishop with his face uplifted; and the men on their 
knees on the sand, with uncovered heads and faces in their 
caps, murmured their responses in their own tongue, “ Yn 
Meailley.” 

And while they prayed, the soft boom of the unruffled waters 
on the shore, and the sea's deep murmur from away beyond 
the headland, and the wild jabbering cries of a flight of sea- 
gulls, disporting on a rock in the bay, were the only sounds 
that mingled with the bishop's deep tones and the men's hoarse 
voices. 

Last of all the bishop gave out a hymn. It was a simple old 
hymn, such as every man had known since his mother had 
crooned it over his cot. The men rose to their feet, and their 
lusty voices took up the strain; the crowd behind, and the 
clergy on their horses, joined it; and from the Deemster’s 
coach two women’s voices took it up, and higher, higher, 
higher, like a lark, it floated up, until the soft boom and deep 
murmur of the sea and the wild cry of the sea-birds were 
drowned in the broad swell of the simple old sacred song. 

The sun was sinking fast through a red haze toward the sea’s 
verge, and the tide was near the flood, when the service on the 
shore ended, and the fishermen returned to their boats. 

Billy Quilleash leaped aboard the new lugger, and his four 
men followed him. ‘ 4 See all clear, ” he shouted to Davy Fayle; 
and Davy stood on the quay with the duty of clearing the 
ropes from the blocks, and then following in the dingy that 
lay moored to the wooden steps. 

Dan had gone up to the Deemster’s coach and helped Mons), 
and the young wife of Ewan to alight. He led them to the 
quay steps, and when the company had gathered about, and 
all was made ready, he shouted to old Billy to throw him the 
bottle that lay tied by the blue ribbon to the tiller. Then he 
handed the bottle to Mona, who stood on the step, a few feet 
above the water’s edge. 

Mona was looking very fresh and beautiful that day, with a 
delicious joy and pride in her deep eyes. Dan was talking to 
her with an awkward sort of consciousness, looking askance at 




























































THE DEEMSTER. 


75 


his big brown hands when they came in contact with her dainty 
white fingers, then glancing down at his great clattering boots, 
and up into her soft smooth face. 

“ What am 1 to christen her?” said Mona, with the bottle 
held up in her hand. 

Mona/ ” answered Dan, with a shamefaced look and one 
hand in his brown hair. 

“ No, no,” said she, 44 not that.” 

“ Then what you like,” said Dan. 

“Well, the 4 Ben-my-Chree/ ” said Mona, and with that 
the bottle broke on the boat's side. 

In another instant Ewan was kissing his meek little wife, 
and bidding her good-bye, and Dan, in a fumbling way, was, 
for the first time in his life, demurely shaking Mona's hand, 
and trying hard to look her in the face. 

“ Tail on there,” shouted Quilleash from the lugger. Then 
the two men jumped aboard, Davy Fayle ran the ropes from 
the blocks, the admiral's boat cleared away from the quay, 
and the admiral's flag was shot up to the mast-head. The 
other boats in the harbor followed one by one, and soon the 
bay was full of the fleet. 

As the 4 4 Ben-my-Chree ” stood out to sea beyond the island 
rock, Dan and Ewan stood aft, Dan in his brown guernsey, 
Ewan in his black coat; Ewan waving his handkerchief, and 
Dan his cap; old Billy was at the tiller, Crennel, the cook, had 
his head just above the hatchway, and Davy was clambering 
hand-over-hand up the rope by which the dingy was hauled to 
the stern. 

Then the herring fleet sailed away under the glow of the set- 
ting sun. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE FIRST NIGHT WITH THE HERRINGS. 

The sun went down, and a smart breeze rose off the land as 
the 44 Ben-my-Chree,” with the fleet behind her, rounded Con- 
trary Head, and crossed the two streams that flow there. Eor 
an hour afterward there was still light enough to see the coast- 
line curved into covelets and promontories, and to look for 
miles over the hills with their moles of gorse, and tussocks of 
lush grass. The twilight deepened as the fleet rounded 
Niarbyl Point, and left the islet on their lee, with Cronk-ny- 
lrey-Lhaa towering into the gloomy sky. When they sailed 
across Fleshwick Bay the night gradually darkened, and noth- 
ing was seen of Ennyn Mooar. But after an hour of darkness 


n 


THE DEEMSTER. 


the heavens lightened again, and glistened with stars, and 
when old Billy Quilleash brought his boat head to the wind in 
six fathoms of water outside Port Erin, the moon had risen 
behind Bradda, and the ragged headland showed clear against 
the sky. One after another the boats and the fleet brought to 
about the “ Ben-my-Ohree. ” 

Dan asked old Billy if he had found the herrings on this 
ground at the same time in former seasons. 

“Not for seven years,” said the old man. 

“ Then why try now?” 

Bill stretched out his hand to where a flight of sea-gulls were 
dipping and sailing in the moonlight. “ See the gull there?” 
he said. “ She’s skipper to-night; she’s showing us the fish.” 

Davy Fayle had been leaning over the bow, rapping with a 
stick at the timbers near the water’s edge. 

“ Any signs?” shouted Billy Quilleash. 

“ Ay,” said Davy, “ the mar-fire’s risin’.” 

The wind had dropped, and luminous patches of phosphor- 
escent light in the water were showing that the herrings were 
stirring. 

“ Let’s make a shot; up with the gear,” said Quilleash, and 
preparations were made for shooting the nets over the quarter. 

“ Ned Teare, you see to the line. Crennel, look after the 
corks. Davy — where’s that lad? — look to the seizings, d’ye 
hear?” 

Then the nets were hauled from below, and passed over a 
bank-board placed between the hatchway and the top of the 
bulwark. Teare and Crennel shot the gear, and as the seiz- 
ings came up, Davy ran aft with them, and made them fast to 
the warp near the taffrail. 

When the nets were all paid out, every net in the drift being 
tied to the next, and a solid wall of meshes nine feet deep had 
been swept away along the sea for half a mile behind them 
Quilleash shouted, “ Down with the sheets.” 

The ropes were hauled, the sails were taken in, the main- 
mast — which was so made as to lower backward — was dropped, 
and only the drift-mizzen was left, and that was to keep the 
boat head on to the wind. 

“Up with the light there,” said Quilleash. 

At this word Davy Fayle popped his head out of the hatch- 
way. 

“ Aw, to be sure, that lad’s never ready. Ger out of that, 
quick. ” 

Davy jumped on deck, took a lantern and fixed it to the 
top of the mitch-board. Then vessel and nets drifted together, 


THE DEEMSTEB. 77 

and Dan and Ewan, who had kept the deck until now, went 
below together. 

It was now a calm, clear night, with just light enough to 
show two or three of the buoys on the back of the net nearest 
to. the boat as they floated under water. Old Billy had not 
mistaken his ground. Large white patches came moving out 
of the surrounding pavement of deep black, lightened only by 
the image of a star where the vanishing ripples left the dark 
sea smooth. Once or twice countless faint popping sounds 
were to be heard, and minute points of shooting silver were to 
be seen on the water around. The herrings were at play, and 
shoals on shoals soon broke the black sea into a glistening 
foam. 

But no “ strike " was made, and after an hour's time Dan 
popped his head over the hatchway and asked the skipper to 
try the ‘ 4 look-on ” net. The warp was hauled in until the 
first net was reached. It came up as black as coal, save for a 
dog-fish or two that had broken a mesh here and there. 

“ Too much moon to-night," said Quilleash; “ they see the 
nets, and 'cute they are extraordinary." 

But half an hour later the moon went out behind a thick 
ridge of cloud that floated over the land; the sky became gray 
and leaden, and a rising breeze ruffled the sea. Then hour 
after hour wore on, and not a fish came to the look-on net. 
Toward one o'clock in the morning the moon broke out again. 
“ There'll be a heavy strike now," said Quilleash, and in an 
other instant a luminous patch floated across the line of the 
nets, sunk, disappeared, and finally pulled three of the buoys 
down with them. 

“ Pull up now," shouted Quilleash, in another tone. 

Then the nets were hauled. Davy, the boy, led the warp 
through a snatch-block fixed to the mast-hole on to the capstan. 
Ned Teare disconnected the nets from the warps, and Crennel 
and Corlett pulled the nets over the gunwale. They came up 
silver-white in the moonlight, a solid block of fish. Billy 
Quilleash and Dan passed them over the scudding-pole and 
shook the herrings into the hold. 

“ Five maze at least," said Quilleash, with a chuckle of 
satisfaction. “ Try again." And once more the nets were 
shot. The other boats of the fleet were signaled by a blue 
light run up the drift-mizzen, that the “ Ben-my-Chree " had 
struck a scale of fish. In a few minutes more the blue light 
was answered by other blue lights on every side, and these re- 
ported that the fishery was everywhere faring well. 

One, two, three o'clock came and went. The night was 


78 


THE DEEMSTER. 


wearing on; the moon went out once more, and in the dark- 
ness which preceded the dawn the lanterns burning on the fleet 
of drifting boats gave out an eerie glow across the waters that 
lay black and flat around. The gray light came at length in 
the east, and the sun rose over the land. Then the nets were 
hauled in for the last time and that night’s fishing was done. 
The mast was lifted, but before the boat was brought about 
the skipper shouted, “ Men, let us do as we’re used of,” and 
instantly the admiral’s flag was run up to the masthead, and 
at this sign the men dropped on one knee with their faces in 
their caps, and old Billy offered up a short and simple prayer 
of thanks for the blessings of the sea. 

When this was done every man leaped to his feet, and all 
was work, bustle, shouting, singing out, and some lusty curses. 

“ Tumble up the sheets — bear a hand there — d — n the 
lad!” bawled Quilleash; “get out of the way, or I’ll make 
you walk handsome over the bricks.” 

In five minutes more the “ Ben-my-Chree ” with the her- 
ring fleet behind her was running home before a stiff breeze. 

“ Nine maze — not bad for the first night,” said Dan to 
Ewan. 

“ Souse them well,” said Quilleash, and Ned Teare sprinkled 
salt on the herrings as they lay in the hold. 

Crennel, the cook, better known as the slushy, came up the 
hatchway with a huge saucepan, which he filled with the fish. 
As he did so there was a faint “ cheep, cheep ” from below 
— the herrings were still alive. 

All hands went down for a smoke except Corlett, who stood 
at the tiller, Davy, who counted for nobody and stretched him- 
self out at the bow, and Ewan. The young parson, who had 
been taking note of the lad during the night, now seated him- 
self on a coil of rope near where Davy lay. The “ cheep, 
cheep ” was the only sound in the air except the plash of the 
waters at the boat’s bow, and, with an inclination of the head 
in the direction of the fish in the hold, Ewan said, “ It seems 
cruel, Davy, doesn’t it?” 

“ Cruel? Well, pozzible, pozzible. Och, ’deed now, they’ve 
got their feelings same as anybody else.” 

The parson had taken the lad’s measure at a glance. 

“You should see the shoals of them lying round the nets, 
watching the others — their mothers and sisters, as you might 
say — who’ve got their gills ’tangled. And when you haul the 
net up, away they go at a slant in millions and millions, just 
the same as lightning going through the water. Och, yes, 
yes, leave them alone for having their feelings.” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


79 


“ It does seem cruel, Davy, eh?” 

Davy looked puzzled ; he was reasoning out a grave problem. 

“Well, sir, that’s the mortal strange part of it. It does 
look cruel to catch them, sarten sure; but then the herrings 
themselves catch the sand-eels, and the cod catch the herring, 
and the porpoises and grampuses catch the cod . 99 

Ewan did his best to look astonished. 

“ Aw, that’s 'he truth, sir. It’s terrible, wonderful, 
strange, but I suppose it’s all nathur. You see, sir, we do the 
same ourselves.” 

“ How do you mean, Davy? We don’t eat each other, I 
hope,” said the young parson. 

* Och, don’t we though? Lave us alone for that.” 

Ewan tried to look appalled. 

“ Well, of coorse, not to say ate , not ’zactly ate; but the 
biggest chap allis rigs the rest; and the next biggest chap allis 
rigs a littler one, you know, and the littlest chap, he gets 
rigged by everybody all round, doesn’t he, sir?” 

Davy had got a grip of the knotty problem, but the lad’s 
poor, simple face looked sadly burdened, and he came back to 
his old word. 

“ Seems to me it must be all nathur, sir.” 

Ewan began to feel some touch of shame at playing with 
this simple, earnest, big little heart. “ So you think it all 
nature, Davy,” he said, with a lump gathering in his throat. 

“ Well, well, I do, you know, sir; it does make a fellow fit 
to cry a bit, somehow; but it must be nathur, sir.” 

And Davy took off his blue worsted cap and fumbled it and 
gave his troubled young head a grave shake. 

Then there was some general talk about Davy’s early his- 
tory. Davy’s father had been pressed into the army before 
Davy was born, and had afterward been no more heard of; 
then his mother had died, and Billy Quilleash, being his moth- 
er’s elder brother, had brought him up. Davy had always 
sailed as boy with Uncle Billy, he was sailing as boy then, and 
that was to the end that Uncle Billy might draw his share, but 
the young master (Mastha Dan) had spoken up for him, so he 
had, and he knew middlin’ well what that would come to. 
“ He’s a tidy lump of a lad now,” says Mastha Dan, “ and 
he’s well used of the boats, too,” says he, “ and if he does well 
this time,” he says, “ he must sail man for himself next sea- 
son. Aw, yes, sir, that was what Mastha Dan said.” 

It was clear that Dan was the boy’s hero. When Dan was 
mentioned that lagging lip gave a yearning look to Davy’s 
simple face. Dan’s doubtful exploits and his dubious tri- 


80 


THE DEEMSTER. 


umphs all looked glorious in Davy’s eyes. Davy had watched 
Dan, and listened to him, and though Dan might know noth- 
ing of his silent worship, every word that Dan had spoken to 
him had been hoarded up in the lad’s heart like treasure. 
Davy had the dog’s soul, and Dan was his master. 

“ Uncle Billy and him’s same as brothers,” said Davy; 
“ and Uncle Billy’s uncommon proud of the young master, 
and middlin’ jealous, too. Aw, well! who’s wondering at it?” 

Just then Orennel, the cook, came up to say that breakfast 
was ready, and Ewan and Davy went below, the young par- 
son’s hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. In the cabin Dan 
was sitting by the stove, laughing immoderately. Ewan saw 
at a glance that Dan had been drinking, and he forthwith 
elbowed his way to Dan’s side and lifted a brandy bottle from 
the stove top into the locker, under pretense of finding a place 
for his hat. Then all hands sat down to the table. There 
was a huge dish of potatoes boiled in their jackets, and a 
similar dish of herrings. Every man dipped into the dishes 
with his hands, lifted his herring on to his plate, ran his fin- 
gers from tail to head, swept all the flesh off the fresh fish, and 
threw the bare backbone into the crock that stood behind. 

“ Keep a corner for the Meailley at the Three Legs,” said 
Dan. 

There was to be a herring breakfast that morning at the 
Three Legs of Man, to celebrate the opening of the fishing 
season. 

“ You’ll come, Ewan, eh?” 

The young parson shook his head. 

Dan was in great spirits, to which the spirits he had imbibed 
contributed a more than common share. Ewan saw the too 
familiar light of dangerous mischief dancing in Dan’s eyes, and 
made twenty attempts to keep the conversation within ordinary 
bounds of seriousness. But Dan was not to be restrained, and 
breaking away into the homespun — a sure indication that the 
old Adam was having the upper hand — he forthwith plunged 
into some chaff that was started by the mate, Ned Teare, at 
Davy Fayle’s expense. 

“ Aw, ye wouldn’t think it’s true, would ye, now?” said 
Ned, with a wink at Dan and a “ glime ” at Davy. 

“ And what’s that?” said Dan, with another “glime r at 
the lad. 

“ Why, that the like o’ yander is tackin’ round the gels.” 

“D’ye raely mane it?” said Dan, dropping his herring and 
lifting his eyes. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


81 


Ewan coughed with some volume, and said: 44 There, there, 
Dan, there, there. " 

“ Yes, though, and sniffin' and snuffin' abaft of them aston- 
ishing " Ned Teare put in again. 

“ Aw, well, well, well," said Dan, turning up afresh the 
whites of his eyes. 

There was not a sign from Davy; he broke his potato more 
carefully, and took both hands and both eyes to strip away its 
jacket. 

44 Yes, yes, the craythur’s doing somethin' in the spooney 
line," said Billy Quilleash; 44 him as hasn't the hayseed out of 
his hair yet. " 

44 Aw, well," said Dan, pretending to come to Davy's relief, 
44 it isn't raisonable but the lad should be coortin' some gel 
now." 

44 What's that?" shouted Quilleash, dropping the banter 
rather suddenly. 44 What, and not a farthing at him? And 
owin' me fortune for the bringin' up?" 

44 No matter, Billy," said Dan, 44 and don't ride a man 
down like a main-tack. One of these fine mornings Davy will 
be payin' his debt to you with the foretopsail. " 

Davy's eyes were held very low, but it was not hard to see 
that they were beginning to fill. 

44 That will do, Dan, that will do," said Ewan. The young 
parson's face had grown suddenly pale, but Dan saw nothing 
of that. 

44 And look at him there," said Dan, reaching round Ewan 
to prod Davy in the ribs, 44 look at him there pretendin' he 
never knows nothin’." 

The big tears were near to toppling out of Davy's eyes. He 
could have borne the chaff from any one but Dan. 

44 Dan," said Ewan, with a constrained quietness, 44 stop it; 
I can't stand it much longer." 

At that Davy got up from the table, leaving his unfinished 
breakfast, and began to climb the hatchway. 

44 Aw, now, look at that," said Dan, with affected solemnity, 
and so saying, and not heeding the change in Ewan's manner, 
Dan got up too and followed Davy out, put an arm round the 
lad's waist, and tried to draw him back. 44 Don't mind the 
loblolly boys, Davy veg," he said, coaxingly. Davy pushed 
him away with an angry word. 

44 What's that he's after saying?" asked Quilleash. 

44 Nothin'; he only cussed a bit," said Dan. 

44 Cussed, did he? He’d better show a leg if he don't want 
the rat's tail. " 


82 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Then Ewan rose from the table, and his eyes flashed and his 
pale face quivered. 

“ I’ll tell you what it is,” he said, in a tense, tremulous 
voice; “ there’s not a man among you. You’re a lot of skulk- 
ing cowards.” 

At that he was making for the deck; but Dan, whose face, 
full of the fire of the liquor he had taken, grew in one moment 
old and ugly, leaped to his feet in a tempest of wrath, over- 
turned his stool and rushed at Ewan with eyes aflame and up- 
lifted hand, and suddenly, instantly, like a flash, his fist fell, 
and Ewan rolled on the floor. 

Then the men jumped up and crowded round in confusion. 
“ The parzon! the parzon; God preserve me, the parzon!” 

There stood Dan, with a ghastly countenance, white and 
convulsed, and there at his feet lay Ewan. 

“ God A’rniglrty! Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan,” cried Davy. 
Before the men had found time to breathe, Davy had leaped 
back from the deck to the cockpit, and had lifted Ewan’s head 
on to his knee. 

Ewan drew a long breath and opened his eyes. He was 
bleeding from a gash above the temple, having fallen among 
some refuse of iron chain. Davy, still moaning piteously, 
“ Oh, Mastha Dan, God A’mighty, Mastha Dan,” took a white 
handkerchief from Ewan’s breast, and bound it about his head 
over the wound. The blood oozed through and stained the 
handkerchief. 

Ewan rose to his feet pale and trembling, and without look- 
ing at any one steadied himself by Davy’s shoulder, and clam- 
bered weakly to the deck. There he stumbled forward, sat 
down on the coil of rope that had been his seat before, and 
buried his uncovered head in his breast. 

The sun had now risen above Contrary, and the fair young 
morning light danced over the rippling waters far and near. 
A fresh breeze blew from the land, and the boats of the fleet 
around and about scudded on before the wind like a flight of 
happy birds with outspread wings. 

The “ Ben-my-Chree ” was then rounding the head, and 
the smoke was beginning to coil up in many a slender shaft 
above the chimneys of the little town of Peel. But Ewan saw 
nothing of this; with head on his breast, and his heart cold 
within him, he sat at the bow. 

Down below Dan was then doing his best to make himself 
believe that he was unconcerned. He whistled a little, and 
sung a little, and laughed a good deal; but the whistle lost its 
tune, and the song stopped short, and the Jaugh was loud and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


83 


empty. . When he first saw Ewan lie where he fell, all the fire 
of his evil passion seemed to die away, and for the instant his 
heart seemed to choke him, and he was prompted to drop 
down and lift Ewan to his feet; but at that moment his stub- 
born knees would not bend, and at the next moment the angel 
of God troubled the waters of his heart no more. Then the 
fisher-fellows overcame their amazement, and began to crow, 
and to side with him, and to talk of his pluck, and what not. 

“ The parzons — och, the parzons — they think they may ride 
a man down for half a word inside his gills. " 

“ 6 Cowards 9 — och , 4 skulking cowards/ if you plaize — right 
sarved, say I!” 

Dan tramped about the cabin restlessly, and sometimes 
chuckled aloud and asked himself what did he care, and then 
laughed noisily, and sat down to smoke, and presently jumped 
up, threw the pipe into the open stove, and took the brandy 
bottle out of the locker. Where was Ewan? What was he 
doing? What was he looking like? Dan would rather have 
died than humbled himself to ask; but would none of these 
grinning boobies tell him? When Teare, the mate, came down 
from the deck, and said that sarten sure the young parzon was 
afther say in* his prayers up forrard, Dan's eyes flashed again, 
and he had almost lifted his hand to fell the sniggering waist- 
rel. He drank half a tumbler of brandy, and protested afresh, 
though none had yet disputed it, that he cared nothing, not 
he, let them say what they liked to the contrary. 

In fifteen minutes from the time of the quarrel the fleet was 
running into harbor. Dan had leaped on deck just as the 
“ Ben-my-Chree " touched the two streams outside Contrary. 
He first looked forward, and saw Ewan sitting on the cable in 
the bow with his eyes shut and his pallid face sunk deep in his 
breast. Then a strange, wild light shot into Dan's eyes, and 
he reeled aft and plucked the tiller from the hand of Corlett, 
and set it hard aport, and drove the boat head on for the nar- 
row neck of water that flowed between the main-land and the 
island rock on which the old castle stood. 

44 Hould hard/* shouted old Billy Quilleash, 44 there's not 
water enough for the like o' that — you'll run her on the 
rocks/' 

Then Dan laughed wildly, and his voice rang among the 
coves and caves of the coast. 

44 Here's for the harbor or — hell," he screamed, and then 
another wild peal cf his mad laughter rang in the air and 
echoed from the land. 

“What's agate of the young mastha?" the men muttered 


84 


THE DEEMSTER. 


one to another; and with eyes of fear they stood stock-still on 
the deck and saw themselves driven on toward the shoals of 
the little sound. 

In two minutes more they breathed freely. The 4 4 Ben-my- 
Chree " had shot like an arrow through the belt of water and 
was putting about in the harbor. 

Dan dropped the tiller, reeled along the deck, scarcely able 
to bear himself erect, and stumbled under the hatchway. 
Old Billy brought up the boat to its moorings. 

“ Come, lay down, d'ye hear? Where’s that lad?" 

Davy was standing by the young parson. 

“ You idiot waistrel, why d'ye stand prating there? I’ll 
pay you, you beachcomber." 

The skipper was making for Davy, when Ewan got up, 
stepped toward him, looked him hard in the face, seemed 
about to speak, checked himself, and turned away. 

Old Billy broke into a bitter little laugh, and said: 44 I'm 
right up and down like a yard o' pump water, that's what 
I am." 

The boat was now at the quay side, and Ewan leaped ashore. 
Without a word or a look more he walked away, the white 
handkerchief, clotted with blood, still about his forehead, and 
his hat carried in his hand. 

On the quay there were numbers of women with baskets 
waiting to buy the fish. Teare, the mate, and Crennel, the 
cook, counted the herrings and sold them. The rest of the 
crew stepped ashore. 

Dan went away with the rest. His face was livid in the soft 
morning sunlight. He was still keeping up his brave outside, 
while the madness was growing every moment fiercer within. 
As he stumbled along the paved way with an unsteady step his 
hollow laugh grated on the quiet air. 


CHAPTER XL 

THE HERRIHG BREAKFAST. 

It was between four o'clock and five when the fleet ran into 
Peeltown harbor after the first night of the herring season, 
and toward eight the fisher-fellows, to the number of fifty at 
least, had gathered for their customary first breakfast in the 
kitchen of the Three Legs of Man. What sport! What noisy 
laughter! What singing and rollicking cheers! The men 
stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, 
their sitting nor their standing. In they trooped in their 
woolen caps or their broad sou-westers, their oilskins or their 


THE DEEMSTEB. 


85 


long sea-boots swung across their arms. They wore their caps 
or not as pleased them, they sung or talked as suited them, 
they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or snarled, they were 
noisy or silent, precisely as the whim of the individual pre- 
scribed, the individual rule of manners. Rather later than the 
rest Dan Mylrea came swinging in, with a loud laugh and a 
shout, and something like an oath, too, and the broad home- 
spun on his lips. 

4 4 Billy Quilleash — I say, Billy, there — why don’t you put 
up the young mastha for the chair?” 

44 Aw, lave me alone,” answered Billy Quilleash, with a 
contemptuous toss of the head. 

44 Uncle Billy’s proud uncommon of the mastha,” whispered 
Davy Fayle, who sat meekly on a form near the door, to the 
man who sat cross-legged on the form beside him. 

44 It’s a bit free them chaps is making,” said old Billy, in a 
confidential under-tone to Dan, who was stretching himself out 
on the settle. Then rising to his feet with gravity, 44 Gen’l’- 
men,” said Quilleash, 44 what d’ye say now to Mastha Dan’l 
Mylrea for the elber-cheer yander?” 

At that there was the response of loud raps on the table 
with the heels of the long boots swung over various arms, and 
with several clay pipes that lost their heads in the encounter. 
Old Billy resumed his seat with a lofty glance of patronage at 
the men about him, which said as plainly as words themselves, 
44 1 tould ye to lave it all to me. ” 

44 Proud, d’ye say? Look at him,” muttered the fisherman 
sitting by Davy Fayle. 

Dan staggered up, and shouldered his way to the elbow-chair 
at the head of the table. He had no sooner taken his seat 
than he shouted for the breakfast, and without more ado the 
breakfast was lifted direct on to the table from the pans and 
boilers that simmered on the hearth. 

First came the broth, well loaded with barley and cabbage; 
then suet puddings; and last of all. the frying-pan was taken 
down from the wall, and four or five dozen of fresh herrings 
were made to grizzle and crackle and sputter over the fire. 

Dan eat ravenously, and laughed noisily, and talked inces- 
santly as he eat. The men at first caught the contagion of his 
boisterous manners, but after a time they shook their tousled 
heads and laid them together in gravity, and began to repeat 
in whispers, 44 What’s agate of the young mastha, at all at all?” 

Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil lamp with 
its open mouth — a relic of some monkish sanctuary of the 
middle ages — was lifted from the mantel-shelf and put on the 


86 


THE DEEMSTER. 


' ’ *’ ' * ' brass censer, choked with 



emerged from waistcoat 


pockets, and pots of liquor, with glasses and bottles, came in 
from the outer bar. 

“ Is it heavy on the liquor you're going to be, Billy?" said 
Ned, the mate; and old Billy replied with a superior smile 
and the lifting up of a whisky bottle, from which he had just 
drawn the cork. 

Then came the toasts. The chairman arose amid hip, hip, 
hooraa! and gave “ Life to man and death to fish!" and Q un- 
leash gave “ Death to the head that never wore hair!" 

Then came more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of 
both in the vicinity of the chair. Dan struck up a song. He 
sung “ Drink to me only," and the noisy company were at 
first hushed to silence and then melted to audible sobs. 

“ Aw, man, the voice he has, any way!" 

“ And the loud it is, and the tender, too, and the way he 
slidders up and down, and no squeaks and jumps." 

“ No, no; nothin' like squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow 
by pulling the tail at her." 

Old Billy listened to this dialogue among the fisher-fellows 
about him, and smiled loftily. “ It's nothin'," he said, con- 
descendingly, “ that's nothin'. You should hear him out in 
the boat, when we're lying at anchor, and me and him to- 
gether, and the stars just makin' a peep, and the moon, and 
the mar-fire, and all to that, and me and him lying aft and 
smookin', and having a glass may be, but nothin' to do no 
harm — that's the when you should hear him. Aw, man alive, 
him and me's same as brothers." 

“ More liquor there," shouted Dan, climbing with difficulty 
to his feet. 

“ Ay, look here. D'ye hear down yander? Give us a swipe 
o' them speerits. Bight. More liquor for the chair!" said 
Billy Quilleash. “ And for some one besides? — is that what 
they’re saying, the loblolly boys? Well, look here, bad cess to 
it, of coorse, some for me, too. It's terrible good for the 
narves, and they're telling me it’s morthal good for steddyin’ 
the voice. Going to sing? Coorse, coorse. What's that from 
the elber-cheer? Enemy, eh? Confound it, and that's true, 
though. What's that it's sayin'? ‘Who's fool enough to 
put the enemy into his mouth to stale away his brains?' Aw, 
now, it's the good ould Book that's fine at summin' it all up." 

Then there was more liquor and yet more, till the mouth of 
the monastic lamp ran over with chinking coin. Old Billy 










THE DEEMSTER. 


87 


struck up his song. It was a doleful ditty on the loss of the 
herring fleet on one St. Matthew's-day not long before. 

“ An hour before day, 

Tom Grimshaw, they say, 

To run for the port had resolved; 

Himself and John More 
Were lost in that hour, 

And also unfortunate Kinved.” 

The last three lines of each verse were repeated by the whole 
company in chorus. Doleful as the ditty might be, the men 
gave it voice with a heartiness that suggested no special sense 
of sorrow, and loud as were the voices of the fisher-fellows, 
Dan's voice was yet louder. 

“A w, Dan, man, Dan, man alive, Dan," the men whis- 
pered among themselves. “ What's agate of Mastha Dan? it's 
more than's good, man, aw, yes, yes, yes." 

Still more liquor and yet more noise, and then through the 
dense fumes of tobacco smoke, old Billy Quilleash could be 
seen struggling to his feet. “Silence!" he shouted; “aisy 
there!" and he lifted up his glass. “ Here's to Mistha Dan'l 
Mylrea, and if he's not going among the parzons, bad cess to 
them, he's going among the Kays, and when he gets to the big 
house at Castletown, I'm calkerlatin' it'll be all up with the 
lot o' them parzons, with their tithes and their censures, and 
their customs and their canons, and their regalashuns agen 
the countin' of the herrin' and all the rest of their messin'. 
What d'ye say, men? 4 Skulking cowards?' Coorse, and 
right sarved, too, as I say. And what's that you're grinning 
and winkin' at, Ned Teare? It's middlin' free you're gettin' 
with the mastha anyhow, and if it wasn't for me he wouldn't 
bemane himself by cornin' among the like of you, singin' and 
makin' aisy. Chaps, fill up your glasses every man of you, 
d'ye hear? Here's to the best gen'l'man in the island, bar 
none — Mistha Dan'l Mylrea, hip, hip, hooraa!" 

The toast was responded to with alacrity, and loud shouts of 
“ Dan'l Mylrea — best gen'l'man — bar none." 

But what was going on at the head of the table? Dan had 
risen from the elbow-chair; it was the moment for him to 
respond, but he stared wildly around, and stood there in 
silence, and his tongue seemed to cleave to his mouth. Every 
eye was now fixed on his face, and that face quivered and 
turned white. The glass he had held in his hand fell from his 
nerveless fingers, and broke on the table. Laughter died on 
every lip, and the voices were hushed. At last Dan spoke; his 
words came slowly, and fell heavily on the ear. 


88 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Men/ 5 he said, “ you have been drinking my health. You 
call me a good fellow. That's wrong. I'm the worst man 
among you. Old Billy says I'm going to the House of Keys. 
That's wrong, too. Shall 1 tell you where I am going? ShalL 
I tell you? I'm going to the devil," and then, amid breath- 
less silence, he dropped back in his seat, and buried his head 
in his hands. 

No one spoke. The fair head lay on the table among broken 
pipes and the refuse of spilled liquor. There could be no 
more drinking that morning. Every man rose to his feet, 
and, pickiug up his water-proofs or his long sea-boots, one after 
one went shambling out. The room was dense with smoke; 
but outside the air was light and free, and the morning ‘sun 
shone brightly. 

“ Strange now, wasn't it?" muttered one of the fellows. 

“ Strange uncommon!" 

“ He's been middlin' heavy on the liquor lately." 

“ And he’d never no right to strike the young parzon, and 
him his cousin, too, and terrible fond of him, as they're 
saying." 

“ Well, well, it's middlin' wicked any way." 

And so the croakers went their way. In two minutes more 
the room was empty, except for the stricken man, who lay 
there with hidden face, and Davy Fayle, who, with big tears 
glistening in his eyes, was stroking the tangled curls. 


CHAPTER XII. 

DAN'S PENANCE. 

Dan rose to his feet a sobered man, and went out of the 
smoky pot-house without a word to any one, and without lift- 
ing his bleared and blood-shot eyes unto any face. He took 
the lane to the shore, and behind him, with downcast eyes, 
like a dog at the heels of his master, Davy Fayle slouched 
along. When they reached the shore Dan turned toward Orris 
Head, walking within a yard or two of the water's edge. Strid- 
ing over the sands, the past of his childhood came back to him 
with a sense of pain. He saw himself flying along the beach 
with Ewan and Mona, shouting at the gull, mocking the cor- 
morant, clambering up the rocks to where the long-necked 
bird laid her spotted eggs, and the sea-pink grew under the 
fresh grass of the corries. Under the Head Dan sat on a rock 
and lifted away his cap from his burning forehead; but not a 
breath of wind stirred his soft hair. 

Dan rose again with a new resolve. He knew now what 


THE DEEMSTER. 


89 


course he must take. He would go to the Deemster, confess 
to the outrage of which he had been guilty, and submit to the 
just punishment of the law. With quick steps he strode back 
over the beach, and Davy followed him until he turned up to 
the gates of the new Ballamona, and then the lad rambled 
away under the foot of Slieu Dhoo. Dan found the Deem- 
ster’s house in a tumult. Hommy-beg was rushing here and 
there, and Dan called to him, but he waved his arm and shout- 
ed something in reply, whereof the purport was lost, and then 
disappeared. Blind Kerry was there, and when Dan spoke to 
her as she went up the stairs, he could gather nothing from 
her hurried answer except that some one was morthal bad, as 
the saying was, and in another moment she, too, had gone. 
Dan stood in the hall with a sense of impending disaster. 
What had happened? A dread idea struck him at that mo- 
ment like a blow on the brain. The sweat started from his 
forehead. He could bear the uncertainty no longer, and had 
set foot on the stairs to follow the blind woman when there 
was the sound of a light step descending. In another moment 
he stood face to face with Mona. She colored deeply, and his 
head fell before her. 

“Is it Ewan?” he said, and his voice came like a hoarse 
whisper. 

“No, his wife,” said Mona. 

It turned out that not long after day-break that morning the 
young wife of Ewan, who had slept with Mona, had awakened 
with a start, and the sensation of having received a heavy blow 
on the forehead. She had roused Mona, and told her what 
seemed to have occurred. They had looked about and seen 
nothing that could have fallen. They had risen from bed and 
examined the room, and had found everything as it had been 
when they lay down. The door was shut and there was no 
hood above the bed. But Mona had drawn up the window 
blind, and then she had seen, clearly marked on the white 
forehead of Ewan’s young wife, a little above the temple, on 
the spot where she had seemed to feel the blow, a streak of 
pale color such as might have been made by the scratch of a 
thorn that had not torn the skin. It had been a perplexing 
difficulty, and the girls had gone back to bed, and talked of it 
in whispers until they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. 
When they had awakened again, the Deemster was rapping at 
their door to say that he had taken an early breakfast, that he 
was going off to hold his court at Ramsey, and expected to be 
back at midday. Then, half timidly, Mona had told her 
father of their strange experience, but he had bantered them 


90 


THE DEEMSTER. 


on their folly, and they had still heard his laughter when he 
had leaped to the saddle in front of the house, and was canter- 
ing away over the gravel. Reassured by the Deemster’s unbe- 
lief, the girls had thrown off their vague misgivings, and given 
way to good spirits. Ewan’s young wife had said that all 
morning she had dreamed of her husband, and that her dreams 
had been bright and happy. They had gone down to break- 
fast, but scarcely had they been seated at the table before they 
had heard the click of the gate from the road. 

Then they had risen together, and Ewan had come up the 
path with a white bandage about his head, and with a streak 
of blood above the temple. With a sharp cry, Ewan’s young 
wife had fallen to the ground insensible, and when Ewan him- 
self had come into the house they had carried her back to bed. 
There she was at that moment, and from a peculiar delicacy 
of her health at the time, there was but too much reason to 
fear that the shock might have serious results. 

All this Mona told to Dan from where she stood three steps 
up the stairs, and he listened with his head held low, one hand 
gripping the stair-rail, and his foot pawing the mat at the bot- 
tom. When she finished, there was a pause, and then there 
came from overhead a long, deep moan of pain. 

Dan lifted his face; its sudden pallor was startling. 
“Mona,” he said, in a voice that was husky in his throat, 
“ do you know who struck Ewan that blow?” 

There was silence for a moment, and then, half in a whisper, 
half with a sob, Mona answered that she knew. It had not 
been from Ewan himself, but by one of the many tongues of 
scandal that the news had come to Ballamona. 

Dan railed at himself in bitter words, and called God to wit- 
ness that he had been a curse to himself and every one about 
him. Mona let the torrent of his self-reproach spend itself, 
and then she said: 

“ Dan, you must be reconciled to Ewan.” 

“ Not yet,” he answered. 

“Yes, yes, I’m sure he would forgive you,” said Mona, 
and she turned about as if in the act of going back to seek for 
Ewan. 

Dan grasped her hand firmly. “No,” he said, “don’t 
heap coals of fire on my head, Mona; don’t, don’t.” And 
after a moment, with a calmer manner, “ I must see the 
Deemster first.” 

Hardly had this been spoken when they heard a horse’s hoofs 
on the gravel path, and the Deemster’s voice calling to Hom- 
my-beg as he threw the reins over the post near the door and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


91 


entered the house. The Deemster was in unusual spirits, and 
slapped Dan on the back and laughed as he went into his 
room. Dan followed him, and Mona crept nervously to the 
open door. With head held down, Dan told what had oc- 
curred. The Deemster listened and laughed, asked further 
particulars and laughed again, threw off his riding-boots and 
leggings, looked knowingly from under his shaggy brows, and 
then laughed once more. 

“ And what d'ye say you want me to do for you, Danny 
veg?” he asked, with one side of his wrinkled face twisted awry. 

“ To punish me, sir,” said Dan. 

. At that the Deemster, who was buckling his slippers, threw 
himself back in his chair, and sent a shrill peal of mocking 
laughter through the house. 

Dan was unmoved. His countenance did not bend as he 
said slowly, and in a low tone: “ If you don't do it, sir, I shall 
never look into Ewan's face again.'' 

The Deemster fixed his buckles, rose to his feet, slapped 
Dan on the back, said “ Go home, man veen, go home,'' and 
then hurried away to the kitchen, where in another moment 
his testy voice could be heard directing Hommy-beg to put up 
the saddle on the “ lath.'' 

Mona looked into Dan's face. “ Will you be reconciled to 
Ewan now?” she said, and took both his hands and held them. 

“ No,” he answered, firmly, “ I will see the bishop.” His 
eyes were dilated ; his face, that had hitherto been very mourn- 
ful to see, was alive with a strange fire. Mona held his hands 
with a passionate grasp. 

“Dan,” she said, with a great tenderness, “this is very, 
very noble of you; this is like our Dan, this — " 

She stopped; she trembled and glowed; her eyes were close 
to his. 

“ Don’t look at me like that,” he said. 

She dropped Iris hands, and at the next instant he was gone 
from the house. 

Dan found the bishop at Bishop's Court, and told him all. 
The bishop had heard the story already, but he said nothing of 
that. He knew when Dan hid his provocation and painted his 
offense at its blackest. With a grave face he listened while 
Dan accused himself, and his heart heaved within him. 

“ It is a serious offense,” he said; “ to strike a minister is a 
grievous offense, and the Church provides a censure.” 

Dan held his face very low, and clasped his hands in front 
of him. 

“ The censure is that on the next Sabbath morning follow- 


92 


THE DEEMSTER. 


ing, in the presence of the congregation, you shall walk up the 
aisle of the parish church from the porch to the communion 
behind the minister, who shall read the fifty-first psalm mean- 
time. ” 

The bishop’s deep tones and quiet manner concealed his 
strong emotion, and Dan went out without another word. 

This was Friday, and on the evening of the same day Ewan 
heard what had passed between Dan and the Deemster and be- 
tween Dan and the bishop, and with a great lump in his throat 
he went across to Bishop’s Court to pray that the censure 
might be taken off. 

“ The provocation was mine, and he is penitent,” said Ewan; 
and with heaving breast the bishop heard him out, and then 
shook his head. 

“ The censures of the Church were never meant to pass by 
the house of the bishop,” he said. 

“ But he is too deeply abased already,” said Ewan. 

“ The offense was committed in public, and before the eyes 
of all men the expiation must be made.” 

“ But I, too, am ashamed — think of it, and remove the 
censure,” said Ewan, and his voice trembled and broke. 

The bishop gazed out at the window with blurred eyes that 
saw nothing. “ Ewan,” he said, “ it is God’s hand on the 
lad. Let it be; let it be.” 

Next day the bishop sent his sumner round the parish, ask- 
ing that every house might send one at least to the parish 
church next morning. 

On Sunday Ewan’s young wife kept her bed; but when 
Ewan left her for the church the shock to her nerves seemed 
in a measure to have passed away. There was, still, however, 
one great disaster to fear, and Mona remained at the bedside. 

The meaning of the sumner’s summons had eked out, and 
long before the hour of service the parish church was crowded. 
The riff-raff that never came to church from year’s end to 
year’s end, except to celebrate the Oiel Verree, were therewith 
eager eyes. While Will-as-Thorn tolled the bell from the rope 
suspended in the porch there was a low buzz of gossip, but 
when the bell ceased its hoarse clanguor, and Will-as-Thorn ap- 
peared with his pitch-pipe in the front of the gallery, there 
could be heard in the silence that followed over the crowded 
church the loud tick of the old wooden clock in front of him. 

Presently from the porch there came a low tremulous voice 
reading the psalm that begins, “ Have mercy upon me, oh, 
God, after Thy great goodness; according to the multitude of 
Thy mercies do away mine offenses. ” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


93 


Then the people who sat in front turned about, and those 
who sat at the side strained across, and those who sat above 
craned forward. 

Ewan was walking slowly up the aisle in his surplice, with 
his pale face and scarred forehead bent low over the book in 
his hand, and close behind him, towering above him in his 
great stature, with head held down, but with a steadfast gaze, 
his hat in his hands, his step firm and resolute, Dan Mylrea 
strode along. 

There was a dead hush over the congregation. 

“Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness; and cleanse 
me from my sin. For I acknowledge my faults; and my sin 
is ever before me.” 

The tremulous voice rose and fell, and nothing else broke 
the silence except the uncertain step of the reader, and the 
strong tread of the penitent behind him. 

“ Against Thee only have 1 sinned, and done this evil in Thy 
sight — " 

At this the tremulous voice deepened, and stopped, and 
went on, and stopped again, and when the words came once 
more they came in a deep, low sob, and the reader's head fell 
into his breast. 

Not until the psalm came to an end, and Ewan and Dan had 
reached the communion, and the vicar had begun the morn- 
ing prayer, and Will-as-Thorn had sent out a blast from his 
pitch-pipe, was the hard tension of that moment broken. 

When the morning service ended, the Deemster rose from 
his pew and hurried down the aisle. As usual, he was the first 
to leave the church. The ghostly smile with which he had 
witnessed the penance that had brought tears to the eyes of 
others was still on the Deemster's lip, and a chuckle was in 
his throat when at the gate of the church-yard he met Horn - 
my-beg, whose face was livid from a long run, and who stood 
for an instant panting for breath. 

“ Well, well, well," said the Deemster, sending the words 
like small shot into Hommy-beg's deaf ear. 

“ Terrible, terrible, terrible," said Hommy-beg, and he 
lifted his hands. 

“What is it? What? What?" 

“ The young woman-body is dead in child-bed." 

Then the ghostly smile fled from the Deemster's face. 


94 


THE DEEMSTER. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

HOW EWAN MOURNED FOR HIS WIFE. 

What passed at the new Ballamona on that morning of 
Dan’s penance was very pitiful. There in the death-chamber, 
already darkened, lay Ewan’s young wife, her eyes lightly 
closed, her girlish features composed, and a faint tinge of color 
in her cheeks. Her breast was half open, and her beautiful 
head lay in a pillow of her soft brown hair. One round arm 
was stretched over the counterpane, and the delicate fingers 
were curved inward until the thumb-nail, like an acorn, rested 
on the inner rim of a ring. Quiet, peaceful, very sweet and 
tender, she lay there like one who slept. After a short, sharp 
pang she had died gently, without a struggle, almost without 
a sigh, merely closing her eyes as one who was weary, and 
drawing a long, deep breath. In dying she had given prema- 
ture birth to a child, a girl, and the infant was alive, and was 
taken from the mother at the moment of death. 

When the Deemster entered the room with a face of great 
pallor and eyes of fear, Mona was standing by the bed-head 
gazing down, but seeing nothing. The Deemster felt the 
pulse of the arm over the couuterpane with fingers that trem- 
bled visibly. Then he shot away from the room, and was no 
more seen that day. The vicar, the child- wife’s father, came 
with panting breath and stood by the bedside for a moment, 
and then turned aside in silence. Ewan came, too, and be- 
hind him Dan walked to the door, and there stopped, and let 
Ewan enter the chamber of his great sorrow alone. Not a 
word was said until Ewan went down on his knees by the side 
of his wife, and put his arms about her, and kissed her lips, 
still warm, with his own far colder lips, and called to her soft- 
ly by her name, as though she slept gently, and must not be 
awakened too harshly, and drew her to his breast, and called 
again in a tenderer tone that brushed the upturned face like a 
caress: 

“ Aileen! Aileen! Aileen!” 

Mona covered her eyes in her hands, and Dan, where he 
stood at the door, turned his head away. 

“ Eileen! Ailee! Ailee! My Ailee!” 

The voice went like a whisper and a kiss into the deaf ear, 
and only one other sound was heard, and that was the faint 
cry of an infant from a room below. 

Ewan raised his head and seemed to listen; he paused and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


95 


looked at the faint color in the quiet cheeks; he put his hand 
lightly on the heart, and looked long at the breast that did not 
heave. Then he drew his arms very slowly away, and rose to 
his feet. 

For a moment he stood as one dazed, like a man whose brain 
is benumbed, and with the vacant light still in his eyes he 
touched Mona on the arm and drew her hand from her eyes, 
and he said, as one who tells you something that you could 
not think, “ She is dead!” 

Mona looked up into his face, and at the sight of it the tears 
rained down her own. Dan had stepped into the room noise- 
lessly, and came behind Ewan, and when Ewan felt his pres- 
ence, he turned to Dan with the same vacant look, and re- 
peated in the same empty tone, “ She is dead!” 

And never a tear came into Ewan's eyes to soften their look 
of dull torpor; never again did he stretch out his arms to the 
silent form beneath him; only with dazed, dry eyes he looked 
down, and said once more, “ She is dead!” 

Dan could bear up no longer; his heart was choking, and 
he went out without a word. 

It was the dread silence of feeling that was frozen, but the 
thaw came in its time. They laid out the body of the young 
wife in the darkened room, and Ewan went away and rambled 
over the house all day long, and when night fell in, and the 
lighted candles were set in the death-chamber, and all in Balla- 
mona were going off to bed, Ewan was still rambling aimlessly 
from room to room. He was very quiet, and he spoke little 
and did not weep at all. In the middle of that night the 
Deemster opened his bedroom door and listened, and Ewan's 
step was still passing from room to room, and Mona heard the 
same restless footfall in every break of her fitful sleep. But 
later on, in the dark hour that comes before day, the Deemster 
opened bis door and listened again, and then all was quiet in 
the house. “ He has gone to bed at last,” thought the Deem- 
ster; but in the early morning as he passed by Ewan's room 
he found the door open, and saw that the bed had not been 
slept in. 

The second day went by like the first, and the next night 
like the former one, and again in the dead of night the Deem- 
ster opened his door and heard Ewan's step. Once more in 
the dark hour that goes before the day he opened his door and 
listened again, and all was quiet as before. “Surely he is in 
bed now,” thought the Deemster. He was turning back into 
his own room when he felt a sudden impulse to go to Ewan's 
room first and see if it was as he supposed. He went, and the 


96 


THE DEEMSTER. 


door was open and Ewan was not there, and again the bed had 
not been slept in. 

The Deemster crept back on tiptoe, and a grewsome feeling 
took hold of him. He could nob lie, and no sleep had come 
near his wakeful eyes, so he waited and listened for that un- 
quiet beat of restless feet, but the sound did not come. Then, 
as the day was breaking over the top of Slieu Dhoo, and all 
the curraghs around lay veiled in mist, and far away to the 
west a deep line stretched across where the dark sea lay with 
the lightening sky above it, the Deemster opened his door yet 
again, and went along the corridor steadily until he came to 
the door of the room where the body was. “ Perhaps he is 
sitting with her,” he thought, with awe, and he turned the 
handle. But when the door swung open the Deemster paused; 
a faint sound broke the silence; it was a soft and measured 
breathing from within. Quivering with dread, the Deemster 
stepped into the death-chamber, and his head turned rigidly 
toward the bed. There, in the gloom of the dawn that came 
over the light of the last candle that flickered in its socket, 
Ewan lay outstretched by the side of the white, upturned face 
of his dead wife, and his hand lay on her hand, and he was in 
a deep sleep. 

To the Deemster it was as if a spirit had passed before his 
face, and the hair of his flesh stood up. 

They buried Ewan’s young wife side by side with his mother 
under the elder-tree (now thick with clusters of the green 
berry) by the wall of the church-yard that stood over by the 
sea. The morning was fine, but the sun shone dimly through 
a crust of hot air that gathered and slumbered and caked 
above. Ewan passed through all without a word or a sigh or 
a tear. But when the company returned to the Deemster’s 
house, and Mona spoke to Ewan and he answered her without 
any show of feeling, and Dan told him of his own remorse and 
accused himself of every disaster, and still Ewan gave no sign, 
but went in and out among them all with the vacant light in 
his eyes, then the bishop whispered to Mona, and she went out 
and presently came again, and in her arms was the infant in 
ts white linen clothes. 

The sun was now hidden by the heavy cloud overhead, and 
against the window-panes at that moment there was a light 
pattering of rain-drops. Ewan had watched with his vacant 
gaze when Mona went out, but when she came again a new 
light seemed to come into his eyes, and he stepped up to her 
and. looked down at the little face that was sleeping softly 
against her breast. Then he put out his arms to take the 


THE DEEMSTER. 


9 ? 


child, and Mona passed it to him, and he held it, and sat down 
with it, and all at once the tears came into his dry eyes and hfc 
wept aloud. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

WRESTLING WITH FATE. 

So far as concerned the Deemster, this death of Ewan's wife 
was the beginning of the end. Had she not died under the 
roof of the new Ballamona? Was it not by the strangest of 
accidents that she had died there, and not in her own home? 
Had she not died in child-bed? Did not everything attending 
her death suggest the force of an irresistible fate? More than 
twenty years ago the woman Kerruish, the mother of Mally 
Kerruish, had cursed this house, and said that no life would 
come to it but death would come with it. 

And for more than twenty years the Deemster had done his 
best to laugh at the prediction and to forget it. Who was he 
that he should be the victim of fear at the sneezing of an old 
woman? What was he that he should not be master of his 
fate? But what had occurred? For more than twenty years 
one disturbing and distinct idea had engrossed him. In all 
his waking hours it exasperated him, and even in his hours of 
sleep it lay heavy at the back of his brain as a dull feeling of 
dread. On the bench, in the saddle, at table, alone by the 
winter's fire, alone in summer walks, the obstinate idea was 
always there. And nothing but death seemed likely to shake 
it off. 

Often he laughed at it in his long, lingering, nervous laugh; 
but it was a chain that was slowly tightening about him. 
Everything was being fulfilled. First came the death of his 
wife at the birth of Mona, and now, after an interval of twenty 
years, the death of his son's wife at the birth of her child. In 
that stretch of time he had become in his own view a childless 
man; his hopes had been thwarted in the son on whom alone 
his hopes had been built; the house he had founded was but an 
echoing vault; the fortune he had reared an empty bubble. 
He was accursed; God had heard the woman's voice; he looked 
too steadily at the facts to mistake them, and let the incredu- 
lous fools laugh if they liked. 

When, twenty years before, the Deemster realized that he 
was the slave of one tyrannical idea, he tried to break the fate 
that hung over him. He bought up the cottage on the Brew, 
and turned the woman Kerruish into the roads. Then he 

4 


THE DEEMSTER. 


E ut his foot on every sign of superstitious belief that came in 
is way as judge. 

But not with such brave shows of unbelief could he conquer 
his one disturbing idea. His nature had never been kindly, 
but now there grew upon him an obstinate hatred of every- 
body. This was in the days when his children, Ewan and 
Mona, lived in the cozy nest at Bishop’s Court. If in these 
days any man mentioned the Kerruishes in the Deemster’s 
presence, he showed irritation, but he kept his ears open for 
every syllable said about them. He knew all their history; 
he knew when the girl Mally fled away from the island on the 
day of Ewan’s christening; he knew by what boat she sailed; 
he knew where she settled herself in England; he knew when 
her child was born, and when in terror at the unfulfilled cen- 
sure of the Church that hung over her (separating her from 
all communion with God’s people in life or hope of redemption 
in death) she came back to the island, drawn by an irresistible 
idea, her child at her breast, to work out her penance on the 
scene of her shame. 

Thereafter he watched her daily, and knew her life. She 
had been taken back to work at the net-looms of Kinvig, the 
Peeltown net-maker, and she lived with her mother at the cot- 
tage over the Head, and there in poverty she brought up her 
child, her boy, Jarvis Kerruish, as she had called him. If any 
pointed at her and laughed with cruelty; if any pretended to 
sympathize with her and said, with a snigger, “ The first 
error is always forgiven, Mally woman;” if any mentioned the 
Deemster himself, and said, with a wink, “ I’m thinking it 
terrible strange, Mally, that you don’t take a slue round and 
put a sight on him;” if any said to her when she bought a new 
garment out of her scant earnings, a gown or even a scarf or 
bit of bright ribbon such as she loved in the old days, “ Dearee 
dear! I thought you wouldn’t take rest, but be up and put a 
sight on the ould crooky ” — the Deemster knew it all. He 
saw the ruddy, audacious girl of twenty sink into the pallid 
slattern of thirty, without hope, without ioy in life, and with 
only a single tie. 

And the Deemster found that there grew upon him daily 
his old malicious feeling; but so far as concerned his outer 
bearing matters took a turn on the day he came upon the boys, 
Dan Mylrea and Jarvis Kerruish, fighting in the road. It was 
the first time he had seen the boy Jarvis. “ Who is he?” he 
had asked, and the old woman Kerruish had made answer, 
“ Don’t you know him. Deemster? Do you never see a face 
like that? Kot when you look in the glass?” 


THE DEEMSTER. 99 

There was no need to look twice into a mirror like the face 
of that lad to know whose son he was. 

The Deemster went home to Ballamona, and thought over 
the fierce encounter. He could tolerate no longer the living 
reproach of this hoy’s presence within a few miles of his own 
house, and, by an impulse no better than humbled pride, he 
went back to the cottage of the Kerruishes at night, alone, 
and afoot. The cottage was a lone place on the top of a bare 
heath, with the bleak sea in front, and the purple hills behind, 
and with a fenceless cart-track leading up to it. A lead mine, 
known as the Cross Vein, had been worked there forty years 
before. The shaft was still open, and now full of dark, foul 
water almost to the surface. One roofless wall showed where 
the gear had stood, and under the shelter of this wall there 
crouched a low thatched tool-shed, having a door and a small 
window. This was the cottage; and until old Mrs. Kerruish 
had brought there her few rickety sticks when, by the Deem- 
ster’s orders, they had been thrown into the road, none had 
ever occupied the tool-shed as a house. 

The door was open, and the Deemster stepped in. One of 
the women, old Mrs. Kerruish, was sitting on a stool by the 
fire — it was a fire of sputtering hazel sticks — shredding some 
scraps of green vegetables into a pot of broth that swung from 
the iron hook of the chimney. The other woman, Mally, was 
doing something in the dark crib of a sleeping-room, shut off 
from the living-room by a wooden partition like the stanchion- 
board of a stable. The boy was asleep; his soft breathing 
came from the dark crib. 

“ Mrs. Kerruish,” said the Deemster, “lam willing to take 
the lad, and rear him, and when the time comes, to set him to 
business, and give him a start in life.” 

Mrs. Kerruish had risen stiffly from her stool, and her face 
was set hard. 

“ Think of it, woman, think of it, and don’t answer in 
haste,” said the Deemster. 

“ We’d have to be despard hard put to for a bite and a sup 
before we’d take anything from you. Deemster,” said the old 
woman. 

The Deemster’s quick eyes, under the shaggy gray brows, 
glanced about the room. It was a place of poverty, descend- 
ing to squalor. The floor was of the bare earth trodden hard;, 
the roof was of the bare thatch, with here and there a lath 
pushed between the unhewn spars to keep it up, and here and 
there a broken patch dropping hayseed. 

“You are desperate hard put to, woman,” said the Deem- 


100 


THE DEEMSTER. 


ster, and at that Mally herself came out of the sleeping crib. 
Her face was thin and pale, and her bleared eyes had lost their 
sharp light; it was a countenance without one ray of hope. 

“ Stop, mother, ” she said, “ let us hear what the Deemster 
has to offer.” 

“ Offer? Offer?” the old woman rapped out; “ you’ve had 
enough of the Deemster’s offers, I’m thinking.” 

“ Be quiet, mother,” said Mally, and then she turned to the 
Deemster and said, “ Well, sir, and what is it?” 

“ Aw, very nate and amazing civil to dirks like that — go on, 
girl, go on,” said the old woman, tossing her head and hand 
in anger toward Mally. 

“ Mother, this is my concern, I’m thinking — what is it, 
sir?” 

But the old woman’s wrath at her daughter’s patience was 
not to be kept down. “ Behold ye!” she said, “ it’s my own 
girl that’s after telling me before strangers that I’ve not a 
farthing at me, and me good for nothing at working, and only 
fit to hobble about on a stick, and fix the house tidy may be, 
and to have no say in nothing — go on, och, go on, girl.” 

The Deemster explained his proposal. It was that the boy 
Jarvis should be given entirely into his control, and be no 
more known by his mother and his mother’s mother, and per- 
haps no more seen or claimed or acknowledged by them, and 
that the Deemster should provide for him and see him started 
in life. 

Mrs. Kerruish’s impatience knew no bounds. “ My 
gough!” she cried, “ my gough, my gough!” But Mally 
listened and reflected. Her spirit was broken, and she was 
thinking of her poverty. Her mother was now laid aside by 
rheumatism, and could earn nothing, and she herself worked 
piece-work at the net-making — so much for a piece of net, a 
hundred yards long by two hundred meshes deep, toiling with- 
out heart from eight to eight, and earning four, five, and six 
shillings a week. And if there was a want, her boy felt it. 
She did not answer at once, and after a moment the Deemster 
turned to the door. 

“ Think of it,” he said; “ think of it!” 

“ Hurroo! hurroo!” cried the old woman derisively from 
her stool, her untamable soul aflame with indignation. 

“ Be quiet, mother,” said Mally, and the hopelessness that 
had spoken from her eyes seemed then to find a way into her 
voice. 

The end of it was that Jarvis Kerruish was sent to a school 
at Liverpool, and remained there three years, and then be- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


101 


came a clerk in the counting-house of Benas Brothers, of the 
Goree Piazza, ostensibly African merchants, really English 
money-lenders. Jarvis did not fret at the loss of his mother, 
and of course he never wrote to her; but he addressed a care- 
ful letter to the Deemster twice a year, beginning, “ Honored 
sir,” and ending, “ Yours, with much respect, most obedi- 
ently.” 

Mally had miscalculated her self-command. If she had 
thought of her poverty it had been because she had thought of 
her boy as well. He would be lifted above it all if she could 
but bring herself to part with him. She wrought up her feel- 
ings to the sacrifice, and gave away her son, and sat down as 
a broken-spirited and childless woman. Then she realized the 
price she had to pay. The boy had been the cause of her 
shame; but he had been the center of her pride as well. If 
she had been a hopeless woman before, she was now a heartless 
one. Little by little she fell into habits of idleness and in- 
temperance. Before young Jarvis sat in his frilled shirt on 
the stool in the Goree Piazza, and before the down had begun 
to show on his lean cheeks, his mother was a lost and aban- 
doned woman. 

But not yet had the Deemster broken his fate. When Ewan 
disappointed his hopes and went into the Church and married 
without his sanction or knowlsdge, it seemed to him that the 
chain was gradually tightening about him. Then the Deem- 
ster went over once more to the cottage at the Cross Vein, 
alone, and in the night. 

“ Mrs. Kerruish,” he said, “ I am willing to allow you six 
pounds a year pension, and I will pay it in three pound notes 
on Lady-day and Martinmas,” and putting his first payment 
on the table he turned about and was gone before the rheu- 
matic old body could twist in her chair. 

The Deemster had just made his third visit to the cottage 
at the Cross Vein, and left his second payment, when the 
death of Ewan's young wife came as a thunder-bolt and startled 
him to the soul. For days and nights thereafter he went 
about like a beaten horse, trembling to the very bone. He 
had resisted the truth for twenty years; he had laughed at it 
in his long lingering laugh at going to bed at night and at 
rising in the morning; he had ridiculed superstition in others, 
and punished it when he could; he was the judge of the 
island, and she through whose mouth his fate fell upon him 
was a miserable ruin cast aside on life's highway; but the truth 
would be resisted no longer: the house over his head was ac- 


102 


THE DEEMSTER. 


cursed — accursed to him, and to his children, and to his chil- 
dren’s children. 

The Deemster’s engrossing idea became a dominating terror. 
Was there no way left to him to break the fate that hung over 
him? None? The Deemster revolved the problem night and 
day, and meantime lived the life of the damned. At length 
he hit on a plan, and then peace seemed to come to him, a 
poor paltering show of peace, and he went about no longer 
like a beaten and broken horse. His project was a strange 
one; it was the last that prudence would have suggested, but 
the first that the evil spirit of his destiny could have hoped 
for — it was to send to Liverpool for Jarvis Kerruish, and 
establish him in Ballamona as his son. 

In that project the hand of his fate was strongly upon him; 
he could not resist it; he seemed to yield himself to its power; 
he made himself its willing victim; he was even as Saul when 
the Spirit of the Lord had gone from him and an evil spirit 
troubled him, sending for the anointed son of Jesse to play 
on the harp to him and to supplant him on the throne. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE LIE THAT EWAN TOLD. 

It was not for long that Dan bore the signs of contrition. 
As soon as Ewan’s pale face had lost the weight of its gloom, 
Dan’s curly poll knew no more of trouble. He followed the 
herrings all through that season, grew brown with the sun 
and the briny air, and caught the sea’s laughter in his rollick- 
ing voice. He drifted into some bad habits from which he 
had hitherto held himself in check. Every morning when the 
boats ran into harbor, and Teare, the mate, and Orennel, the 
cook, stayed behind to sell the fish, Dan and old Billy Quil leash 
trooped up to the Three Legs of Man together. There 
Dan was made much of, and the lad’s spirit was not proof 
against the poor flattery. It was Mastha Dan here, and Mastlia 
Dan there, and Where is Mastha Dan? and What does Mastha 
Dan say? and great shoutings, and tearings, and sprees; and 
all the time the old cat with the whiskers who kept the pot- 
house was scoring up against Dan at the back of the cupboard 
door. 

Did the bishop know? Know? Did ever a young fellow go 
to the dogs but some old woman of either sex found her way 
to the very ear that ought not to be tormented with Job’s 
comfort, and whisper, 4 4 Aw, dear! aw, dear!” and 44 Lawk- 
a-day!” and 44 I’m the last to bring bad newses, as the saying 


THE DEEMSTER. 


103 


is,” and “ Och, and it's a pity, and him a fine, brave young 
fellow too!” and “ I wouldn't have told it on no account to 
another living soul!” 

The bishop said little, and tried not to hear; but when Dan 
would have hoodwinked him he saw through the device as the 
sun sees through glass. Dan never left his father's presence 
without a sense of shame that was harder to bear than any 
reproach would have been. Something patient and trustful, 
and strong in hope, and stronger in love seemed to go out 
from the bishop's silence to Dan's reticence. Dan would slink 
off with the bearing of' a whipped hound, or, perhaps, with a 
muttered curse under his teeth, and always with a stern re* 
solve to pitch himself or his cronies straightway into the sea. 
The tragical purpose usually lasted him over the short mile 
and a half that divided Bishop's Court from the Three Legs 
of Man, and then it went down with some other troubles and 
a long pint of Manx jough. 

Of all men, the most prompt to keep the bishop informed 
of Dan's sad pranks was no other than the Deemster. Since 
the death of Ewan's wife the Deemster's feelings toward Dan 
had undergone a complete change. From that time forward 
he looked on Dan with eyes of distrust, amounting in its in- 
tensity to hatred. He forbade him his house, though Dan 
laughed at the prohibition and ignored it. He also went 
across to Bishop's Court for the first time for ten years, and 
poured into the bishop's ears the story of every bad bit of 
business in which Dan got involved. Dan kept him fully em- 
ployed in this regard, and Bishop's Court saw the Deemster at 
frequent intervals. 

If it was degrading to the bishop's place as father of the 
Church that his son should consort with all the 4 4 raggabash ” 
of the island, the scum of the land, and the dirtiest froth of 
the sea, the bishop was made to know the full bitterness of 
that degradation. He would listen with head held down, and 
when the Deemster, passing from remonstrance to reproach, 
would call upon him to set his own house in order before he 
ever ascended the pulpit again, the bishop would lift his great 
heavy eyes with an agonized look of appeal, and answer in a 
voice like a sob, 4 4 Have patience, Thorkell, have patience with 
the lad; he is my son, my only son.” 

It chanced that toward the end of the herring season an old 
man of eighty, one William Callow, died, and he was the cap- 
tain of the parish of Michael. The captaincy was a semi-civil, 
semi-military office, and it included the functions of parish 
head-constable. Callow had been a man of extreme probity, 


104 


THE DEEMSTER. 


and his walk in life had been without a slip. “ The ould 
man’s left no living craythur to fill his shoes,” the people said 
when they buried him, but when the name of the old man’s 
successor came down from Castletown, who should be the new 
captain but Daniel Mylrea? The people were amazed, the 
Deemster laughed in his throat, and Dan himself looked ap- 
palled. 

Hardly a month after this event, the relations of Dan and 
the Deemster, and Dan and the bishop reached a climax. 

For months past the bishop had been hatching a scheme for 
the subdivision of his episcopal glebe, the large extent of which 
had long been a burden on the dwindling energies of his ad- 
vancing age; and he had determined that, since his son was 
not to be a minister of the church, he should be its tenant, 
and farm its lands. So he cut off from the demesne a farm 
of eighty acres of fine curragh land, well drained and tilled. 
This would be a stay and a solid source of livelihood to Dan 
when the herring fishing had ceased to be a pastime. There 
was no farm-house on the eighty acres, but barns and stables 
were to be erected, and Dan was to share with Ewan the old 
Ballamona as a home. 

Dan witnessed these preparations, but entered into them 
with only a moderate enthusiasm. The reason of his luke- 
warmness was that he found himself deeply involved in debts 
whereof his father knew nothing. When the fishing season 
finished and the calculations were made, it was found that the 
boat had earned no more than £240. Of this, old Billy Quil- 
leash took four shares, every man took two shares, there was 
a share set aside for Davy, the boy, and the owner was entitled 
to eight shares for himself, his nets, and his boat. So far all 
was reasonably satisfactory. The difficulty and dissatisfaction 
arose when Dan began to count the treasury. Then it was 
discovered that there was not enough in hand to pay old Billy 
and his men and the boy, leaving Dan’s eight shares out of 
the count. 

Dan scratched his head and pondered. He was not brilliant 
at figures, but he totted up his numbers again with the same 
result. Then he computed the provisioning — tea, at four 
shillings a pound, besides fresh meat four times a week, and 
fine flour biscuits. It was heavy but not ruinous, and the 
season had been poor but not bad, and, whatever the net re- 
sults, there ought not to have been a deficit where the prin- 
ciple of co-operation between master and man was that of 
share and share. 

Dan began to see his way through the mystery — it was most 


THE DEEMSTER. 


105 


painfully transparent in the light of the score that had been 
chalked up from time to time on the inside of the cupboard of 
the Three Legs of Man. But it was easier to see where 
the money had gone than to make it up, and old Billy and his 
chums began to mutter and to grumble. 

44 It's raely wuss till ever,” said one. 

“ The tack we've been on hasn't been worth workin','' said 
another. 

Dan heard their murmurs, and went up to Bishop's Court. 
After all the deficit was only forty pounds, and his father 
would lend him that much. But hardly had Dan sat down to 
breakfast than the bishop, who was clearly in lower spirits 
than usual, began to lament that his charities to the poor had 
been interrupted by the cost of building the barns and stables 
on the farm intended for his son. 

44 1 hope your fishing will turn out well, Dan,'' he said, 
44 for I've scarce a pound in hand to start you.'' 

So Dan said nothing about the debt, and went back to the 
fisher-fellows with a face as long as a haddock's. “ I'll tell 
you, men, the storm is coming,'' he said. 

Old Billy looked as black as thunder, and answered with an 
impatient gesture, 44 Then keep your weather eye liftin', that's 
all.” 

Dan measured the old salt from head to foot, aud hitched 
his hand into his guernsey. 44 You wouldn't talk to me like 
that, Billy Quilleash, if I hadn't been a fool with you. It's a 
true saying, that when you tell your servant your secret you 
make him your master.” 

Old Billy sniggered, and his men snorted. Billy wanted to 
know why he had left Kinvig's boat where he had a sure thirty 
pounds for his season; and Ned Teare wished to be told what 
his missus would say when he took her five pound ten; and 
Crennel, the slushy, asked what sort of a season the mastha 
was afther callin' it, at all at all. 

Not a man of them remembered his share of the long scores 
chalked up on the inside of the cupboard door. 

44 Poor old dad,” thought Dan, 44 he must find the money 
after all — no way but that,” and once again he turned toward 
Bishop's Court. 

Billy Quilleash saw him going off, and followed him. 44 I've 
somethin' terrible fine up here,” said Billy, tapping his fore- 
head mysteriously. 

44 What is it?” Dan asked. 

44 Och, a shockin' powerful schame. It'll get you out of 
the shoal water any ways,” said Billy. 


106 


THE DEEMSTER. 


It turned out that the ec shockin' powerful schame " wai 
the ancient device of borrowing the money from a moneyv 
lender. Old Billy knew the very man to serve the turn. His 
name was Kisseck, and he kept the Jolly Herrings in 
Peeltown, near the bottom of the crabbed little thoroughfare 
that wound and twisted and descended to that part of the quay 
which overlooked the castle rock. 

“ No, no; that'll not do," said Dan. 

“ Aw, and why not at all?" 

“Why not? Why not? Because it's blank robbery to 
borrow what you can't pay back." 

“ Robbery? Now, what's the use of sayin' the like o' that? 
Aw, the shockin' notions! Well, well, and do you raely think 
a person's got no feelin's? Robbery? Aw, well now, well 
now." 

And old Billy tramped along with the air of an injured man. 

But the end of it was that Dan said nothing to the bishop 
that day, and the same night found him at the Jolly Her- 
rings. The landlord had nothing to lend, not he, but he 
knew people who would not mind parting with money on good 
security, or on anybody's bail, as the sayin' was. Couldn't 
Mastha Dan get a good man's name to a bit 'o paper, like? 
Coorse he could, and nothing easier, for a gent'l'man same as 
him. Who was the people? They belonged to Liverpool, the 
Goree Peaizy — Benas they were callin' them. 

Three days afterward the forty pounds, made up to fifty for 
round numbers, came to Kisseck, the landlord, and the bit o' 
paper came with it. Dan took the paper and went off with it 
to the old Ballamona. Ewan would go bail for him, and so 
the bishop need know nothing of the muddle. But when Dan 
reached his new home Ewan was away — a poor old Quaker 
named Christian, who had brought himself to beggary by 
neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship, was dying, 
and had sent for the parson. 

Dan was in a hurry; the fisher-fellows were grumbling, and 
their wives were hanging close about their coat-tails; the 
money must be got without delay, and of course Ewan would 
sign for it straight away if he were there. An idea struck 
Dan, and made the sweat to start from his forehead. He had 
put the paper on the table and taken up a pen when he heard 
Ewan's voice outside, and then he threw the pen down and his 
heart leaped with a sense of relief. 

Ewan came in, and rattled on about old Christian, the 
Quaker. He hadn't a week to live, poor old soul, and he 
hadn't a shilling left in the world. Once he farmed his hum 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


107 


dred acres, but he had stood surety for this man and surety 
for that man, and paid up the defalcations of both, and now, 
while they were eating the bread of luxury, he was dying as a 
homeless pauper. 

44 Well, he has been practicing a bad virtue,” said Ewan. 
44 1 wouldn’t stand surety for my own brother — not for my 
own brother if I had one. It would be helping him to eat to- 
day the bread he earns to-morrow. ” 

Dan went out without saying anything of the bit of paper 
from Liverpool. The fisher-fellows met him, and when they 
heard what he had to say their grumblings broke out again. 

44 Well, I’m off for the bishop — and no disrespec’,” said old 
Billy. 

He did not go; the bit o’ paper was signed, but not by 
Ewan; the money was paid; the grateful sea-dogs were sent 
home with their wages in their pockets and a smart cuff on 
either ear. 

A month or two went by, and Dan grew quiet and thoughtful, 
and sometimes gloomy, and people began to say, 44 It’s none 
so wild the young mastha is at all at all,” or perhps, 44 Won- 
derful studdy he’s growing,” or even, 44 1 wouldn’t trust but 
he’ll turn out a parson after all. ” One day in November Dan 
went over to new Ballamona and asked for Mona, and sat with 
her in earnest talk. He told her of some impending disaster, 
and she listened with a whitening face. 

From that day forward Mona was a changed woman. She 
seemed to share some great burden of fear with Dan, and it 
lay heavy upon her, and made the way of life very long and 
cheerless to the sweet and silent girl. 

Toward the beginning of December, sundry letters came out 
of their season from the young clerk of Benas Brothers, Jarvis 
Kerruish. Then the Deemster went over more than once to 
Bishop’s Court, and had grave interviews with the bishop. 

44 If you can prove this that you say, Thorkell, I shall turn 
my back on him forever — yes, forever,” said the bishop, and 
his voice was husky and his sad face was seamed with lines of 
pain. 

A few days passed and a stranger appeared at Ballamona, 
and when the stranger had gone the Deemster said to Mona, 
44 Be ready to go to Bishop’s Court with me in the morning.” 

Mona’s breath seemed to be suddenly arrested. 44 Will 
Ewan be there?” she asked. 

44 Yes — isn’t it the day of his week-day service at the chapel 
— Wednesday — isn’t it?” 


108 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Dan? Why Dan? Well, woman, perhaps Dan too — who 
knows?” 

The bishop had sent across to the old Ballamona to say that 
he wished to see his son in the library after service on the fol- 
lowing morning. 

At twelve next day, Dan, who had been plowing, turned in 
at Bishop’s Court in his long boots and rough red shirt, and 
there in the library he found Mona and the Deemster seated. 
Mona did not speak when Dan spoke to her. Her voice 
seemed to fail; but the Deemster answered in a jaunty word 
or two; and then the bishop, looking very thoughtful, came in 
with Ewan, whose eyes were brighter than they had been for 
many a day, and behind them walked the stranger whom Mona 
had seen at Ballamona the day before. 

“ Why, and how’s this?” said Ewan, on perceiving that so 
many of them were gathered there. 

The bishop closed the door, and then answered with averted 
face, “We have a painful interview before us, Ewan — be 
seated.” 

It was a dark day; the clouds hung low, and the dull rum- 
ble of the sea came through the dead air. A fire of logs and 
peat burned on the hearth, and the Deemster rose and stood 
with his back to it, his hands interlaced behind him. The 
bishop sat on his brass-clamped chair at the table, and rested 
his pale cheek on his hand. There was a pause, and then 
without lifting his eyes the bishop said: “ Ewan, do you know 
that it is contrary to the customs of the Church for a minister 
to stand security for a debtor?” 

Ewan was standing by the table fumbling the covers of a 
book that he had lifted. “ I know it,” he said, quietly. 

“ Do you know that the minister who disregards that custom 
stands liable to suspension at the hands of his bishop?” 

Ewan looked about with a stare of bewilderment, but he 
answered again and as quietly, “ 1 know it.” 

There was silence for a moment, and then the Deemster, 
clearing his throat noisily, turned to where Dan was pawing 
up a rug that lay under a column and a bust of Bunyan. 

“And do you know, sir,” said the Deemster, in his shrill 
tones, “ what the punishment of forgery may be?” 

Dan’s face had undergone some changes during the last few 
minutes, but when he lifted it to the Deemster’s it was as firm 
as a rock. 

# “ Hanging, perhaps,” he answered, sullenly; “ transporta- 
tion, perhaps. What of it? Out with it — be quick.” 

Dan’s eyes flashed; the Deemster tittered audibly; the bishop 


THE DEEMSTER. 


109 

looked up at his son from under the rims of his spectacles and 
drew a long breath. Mona had covered her face in her hands 
where she sat in silence by the ingle, and Ewan, still fumbling 
the book in his nervous fingers, was glancing from Dan to the 
Deemster, and from the bishop to Dan, with a look of blank 
amazement. 

The Deemster motioned to the stranger, who thereupon 
advanced from where he had stood by the door, and stepped 
up to Ewan. 

“ May I ask if this document was drawn by your authority ?” 
and saying this the stranger held out a paper, and Ewan took 
it in his listless fingers. 

There was a moment’s silence. Ewan glanced down at the 
document. It showed that fifty pounds had been lent to 
Daniel Mylrea, by Ben as Brothers, of the Goree Piazza, Liver- 
pool, and it was signed by Ewan’s own name as that of surety. 

“ Is that your signature?” asked the stranger. 

Ewan glanced at Dan, and Dan’s head was on his breast and 
his lips quivered. The bishop was trembling visibly, and sat 
with his head bent low by the sorrow of a wrecked and shat- 
tered hope. 

The stranger looked from Ewan to Dan, and from Dan to 
the bishop. The Deemster gazed steadily before him, and his 
face wore a ghostly smile. 

“Is it your signature?” repeated the stranger, and his 
words fell on the silence like the clank of a chain. 

Ewan saw it all now. He glanced again at the document, 
but his eyes were dim, and he could read nothing. Then he 
lifted his face, and its lines of agony told of a terrible struggle. 

“ Yes,” he answered, “ the signature is mine — what of it?” 

At that the bishop and Mona raised their eyes together. 
The stranger looked incredulous. 

“ It is quite right if you say so,” the stranger replied with 
a cold smile. 

Ewan trembled in every limb. “ I do say so,” he said. 

His fingers crumpled the document as he spoke, but his 
head was erect, and the truth seemed to sit on his lips. Dan 
dropped heavily into a chair and buried his face in his hands. 

The stranger smiled again the same cold smile. “ The 
lenders wish to withdraw the loan,” he said. 

“ They may do so — in a month,” said Ewan. 

“ That will suffice.” 

The Deemster’s face twitched; Mona cheeks were wet with 
tears; the bishop had risen and gone to the window, and was 


110 


THE DEEMSTER. 


gazing out through blurred eyes into the blinding rain that 
was now pelting against the glass. 

“It would be cruel to prolong a painful interview, ” said 
the stranger; and then, with a glance toward Dan where he 
sat convulsed with distress that he made no effort to conceal, 
he added in a hard tone: 

44 Only the lenders came to have reasons to fear that per- 
haps the document had been drawn without your knowledge.” 

Ewan handed the paper back with a nerveless hand. He 
looked at the stranger through swimming eyes and said gently, 
but with an awful inward effort, 4 4 You have my answer, sir— 
I knew of it.” 

The stranger bowed and went out. Dan leaped to his feet 
and threw his arms about Ewan's neck, but dared not to look 
into his troubled face. Mona covered her eyes and sobbed. 

The Deemster picked up his hat to go, and in passing out 
he paused in front of Ewan and said, in a bitter whisper: 

44 Fool! fool! You have taken this man's part to your own 
confusion.'' 

When the door closed behind the Deemster the bishop 
turned from the window. 44 Ewan,'' he said, in a voice like a 
cry, 44 the Recording Angel has set down the lie you have told 
to-day in the Book of Life to your credit in heaven.'' 

Then the bishop paused, and Dan lifted his head from 
Ewan's neck. 

44 As for you, sir,” the bishop added, turning to his son, 44 1 
am done with you forever — go from me — let me see your face 
no more.” 

Dan went out of the room with bended head. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PLOWING MATCH. 

When Ewan got back home there was Dan sitting before 
the fire in the old hall, his legs stretched out before him, his 
hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head low on his breast, 
and his whole mien indicative of a crushed and broken spirit. 
He glanced up furtively as Ewan entered, and then back with 
a stony stare to the fire. If Ewan had then given him one 
word of cheer, God knows what tragic consequences would 
have been spared to them both. But Ewan had saved Dan 
from the penalty of his crime at the cost of truth and his self- 
esteem. 

44 Dan,” he said, 44 you and I must part — we can be friends 
no longer. ” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Ill 

He spoke with a strong effort, and the words seemed to 
choke him. Dan shambled to his feet; he appeared to collect 
his thoughts for a moment, like one who had fainted and re- 
turns to consciousness. 

“ Mind — 1 don't turn you out of the house," said Ewan, 
“ only if we are to share this place together we must be 
strangers. " 

A hard smile broke out on Dan's face. He seemed to be 
trying to speak, but not a word would come. He twisted 
slowly on his heel, and lifted the latch of the door that led to 
the inner part of the house. 

“ One thing more," said Ewan, speaking quickly, and in a 
tremulous voice, “ 1 will ask you to look upon yourself as a 
stranger to my sister also. " 

Dan stopped and turned about. Over the forced smile his 
hard face told of a great struggle for self-command. He said 
nothing, and after a moment he went out, drawing his breath 
audibly. 

Then straightway Ewan flung himself in the chair from 
which Dan had risen, and his slight frame shook with sup- 
pressed sobs. After some minutes the sense of his own degra- 
dation diminished, and left room for a just idea of Dan's ab- 
ject humiliation. “I have gone too far," he thought; “I 
will make amends. " He had risen to follow Dan, when an- 
other thought trod heavily on the heels of the first. “ Leave 
him alone, it will be best for himself — leave him alone, for his 
own sake. " And so, with the madness of wrath fermenting 
in his own brain, he left it to ferment in Dan's brain as well. 

Now when Dan found himself left alone he tried to carry 
off his humiliation by a brave show of unconcern. He stayed 
on at the old Ballamona, but he never bothered himself — not 
he, forsooth — to talk to folks who passed him on the stairs 
without a word of greeting, or met in the hall without a glance 
of recognition. 

It chanced just then that, in view of a threatened invasion, 
the authorities were getting up a corps of volunteers, known 
as the Manx Fencibles, and that they called on the captains of 
the parishes to establish companies. Dan threw himself into 
this enterprise with uncommon vigor, took drills himself, ac- 
quired a competent knowledge of the rudiments in a twink- 
ling, and forthwith set himself to band together the young 
fellows of his parish. It was just the sort of activity that Dan 
wanted at the moment, and in following it up the Three Legs 
saw him something oftener than before, and there the fellows 
of the baser sort drank and laughed with him, addressing him 


112 


THE DEEMSTER. 


sometimes as captain, but oftener as Dan, never troubling 
themselves a ha'p'orth to put a handle to his name. 

This was a turn of eveuts which Ewan could not under- 
stand. “ I have been mistaken in tfce~mian," he thought; 
“ there's no heart left in him. " 

Toward the middle of December Jarvis Kerruish arrived at 
Ballamona, and forthwith established himself there in a posi- 
tion that would have been proper to the Deemster's heir. He 
was a young man of medium height and size, closely resem- 
bling the Deemster in face and figure. His dress was English; 
he wore a close-fitting undercoat with tails, and over it a 
loose cloak mounted with a brass buckle at the throat; he had 
a beaver hat of the shape of a sugar loaf; and boots that fitted 
to his legs like gloves. His manner was expansive, and he be- 
trayed a complete unconsciousness of the sinister bar of his 
birth, and of the false position he had taken up in the Deem- 
ster’s house. He showed no desire to visit the cottage at the 
Cross Vein, and he spoke of the poor with condescension. 
When he met with Ewan he displayed no uneasiness, and 
Ewan on his part gave no sign of resentment. Mona, on the 
other hand, betrayed an instinctive repulsion, and in less than 
a week from his coming their relations had reached an extra- 
ordinary crisis, which involved Ewan and Dan and herself in 
terrible consequences. This is what occurred. 

On the day before Christmas-day there was to be a plowing 
match in a meadow over the Head, and Ewan stood pledged 
by an old promise to act as judge. The day came, and it was 
a heavy day, with snow-clouds hanging overhead, and misty 
vapors floating down from the hills and up from the curraghs, 
and hiding them. At ten in the morning Mona muffled her- 
self in a great cloak and went over to the meadow with Ewan. 
There a crowd had already gathered, strong men in blue pilots, 
old men in sheepskin coats, women with their short blue 
camblet gowns tucked over their linen caps, boys and girls on 
every side, all coming and going like shadows in the mist. At 
one end of the meadow several pairs of horses stood yoked to 
plows, and a few lads were in charge of them. On Ewan's 
arrival there was a general movement among a group of men 
standing together and a respectful salutation to the parson. 
The names were called over of the plowmen who had entered 
for the prize — a pound note and a cup — and last of all there 
was a show of hands for the election of six men to form a jury. 

Then the stretch was staked out. The prize was to the 
plowman who would make the itretch up and down the mead' 


THE DEEMSTER. 113 

ow in the shortest time, cutting the furrows straightest, 
cleanest, and of the most regular depth. 

When all was ready, Ewan took up his station where the 
first furrow would be cut into the field, with Mona at his side, 
and the six jurors about him. The first plowman to bring up 
his plow was a brawny young fellow with a tanned face. The 
plowman had brought up his horses in front of the stake, and 
had laid hands on his plow handles, and was measuring the 
stretch with his eye for a landmark to sight by, when Jarvis 
Kerruish came into the meadow and walked through the crowd 
and took up a place by Mona’s side. There were audible com- 
ments, and some racy exclamations as he pushed through the 
crowd, not lifting an eye to any face; but he showed complete 
indifference, and began to talk to Mona in a loud, measured 
tone. 

“Ah! this is very gratifying,” he was saying, “ to see the 
peasantry engaged in manly sports — useful sports — is, I con- 
fess, very gratifying to me.” 

“ My gough!” said a voice from one side. 

“ Hurroo!” said a voice from the other side. 

“ Lawk-a-day!” came from behind in a shrill female treble. 
“ Did ye ever see a grub turn butterfly?” 

Jarvis seemed not to hear. “Now there are sports — ” he 
began; but the plowman was shouting to his horses, “ Steady, 
steady,” the plow was dipping into the succulent grass, the 
first swish of the upturned soil was in the air, and Jarvis’s 
wise words were lost. 

All eyes were on the bent back of the plowman plodding on 
in the mist. “ He cuts like a razor,” said one of the specta- 
tors. “ He bears his hand too much on,” said another. “ Do 
better yourself next spell,” said a third. 

When the horses reached the far end of the stretch the plow- 
man whipped them round like the turn of a wheel, and in an- 
other moment he was toiling back, steadily, firmly, his hand 
rigid, and his face set hard. When he got back to where 
Ewan, with his watch in his hand, stood surrounded by the 
jurors, he was covered with sweat. “ Good, very good — six 
minutes ten seconds,” said Ewan, and there were some plau- 
dits from the people looking on, and some banter of the com- 
petitors who came up to follow. 

Jarvis Kerruish, at Mona’s elbow, was beginning again, “ 1 
confess that it has always been my personal opinion — ” but in 
the bustle of another pair of horses whipped up to the stake 
no one seemed to be aware that he was speaking. 

Five plowmen came in succession, but all were behind th« 


114 


THE DEEMSTER. 


first in time and cut a less regular furrow. So Ewan and the 
jurors announced that the prize was to the stranger. Then as 
Ewan twisted about, his adjudication finished, to where Mona 
stood with Jarvis by her side, there was a general rush of com- 
petitors and spectators to a corner of the meadow, where, from 
a little square cart, the buirdly stranger who was victor pro- 
ceeded to serve out glasses of ale from a small barrel. 

While this was going on, and there was some laughter and 
shouting and singing, there came a loud Halloo ! as of many 
voices from a little distance, and then the beat of many irregu- 
lar feet, and one of the lads in the crowd, who had jumped to 
the top of the broad turf hedge, shouted, “ It’s the capt’n — 
it’s Mastha Dan.” 

In another half minute Dan and some fifty or sixty of the 
scum of the parish came tumbling into the meadow on all sides 
— over the hedge, over the gate, and tearing through the gaps 
in the gorse. They were the corps that Dan had banded to- 
gether toward the Manx Eencibles, but the only regimentals 
they yet wore were a leather belt, and the only inclement of 
war they yet carried was the small dagger that was fitted into 
the belt. That morning they had been drilling, and after drill 
they had set off to see the plowing match, and on the way they 
had passed the Three Legs, and, being exceeding dry, they had 
drawn up in front thereof, and every man had been served 
with a glass, which had been duly scored off to the captain’s 
account. 

Dan saw Mona with Ewan as he vaulted the gate, but he 
gave no sign of recognition, arid in a moment he was in the 
thick of the throng at the side of the cart, hearing all about 
the match, and making loud comments upon it in his broadest, 
homespun. 

“ What!” he said, “ and you’ve let yourselves be bate by a 
craythur like that. Hurroo!” 

He strode up to the stranger’s furrow, cocked his eye along 
it, and then glanced at the stranger’s horses. 

“ Och, I’ll go bail I’ll bate it with a yoke of oxen.” 

At that there was a movement of the crowd around him, 
and some cheering, just to egg on the rupture that was immi- 
nent. 

The big stranger heard all, and strode through the people 
with a face like a thunder-cloud. 

“ Who says he’ll bate it with a yoke of oxen?” he asked. 

“ That’s just what I’m afther saying, my fine fellow. Have 
you anything agen it?” 

In half a minute a wager had been laid of a pound a side 


THE DEEMSTER. 


115 


that Dan with a pair of oxen would beat the stranger with a 
pair of horses in two stretches out of three. 

“ Davy! Davy!” shouted Dan, and in a twinkling there was 
Davy Fayle, looking queer enough in his guernsey, and his 
long boots, and his sea-cap, and withal his belt and his dag- 
ger. Davy was sent for the pair of oxen to where they were 
leading manure, not far away. He went off like a shot, and 
in ten minutes he was back in the meadow, driving the oxen 
before him. 

Now these oxen had been a gift of the bishop to Dan. 
They were old, and had grown wise with their years. For 
fifteen years they had worked on the glebe at Bishop’s Court, 
and they knew the dinner hour as well as if they could have 
taken the altitude of the sun. When the dinner-bell rang at 
the Court at twelve o’clock the oxen would stop short, no mat- 
ter where they were or what they were doing, and not another 
budge would they make until they had been unyoked and led 
off for their midday mash. 

It was now only a few minutes short of twelve, but no one 
took note of that circumstance, and the oxen were yoked to a 
plow. 

“ Same judge and jury,” said the stranger, but Ewan ex- 
cused himself. 

“ Aw, what matter about a judge,” said Dan from his plow 
handles, “ let the jury be judge as well.” 

Ewan and Mona looked on in silence for some moments. 
Ewan could scarce contain himself. There was Dan, stripped 
to his red flannel shirt, his face tanned and glowing, his whole 
body radiant with fresh life and health, and he was shouting 
and laughing as if there had never been a shadow to darken 
his days. 

“ Look at him,” whispered Ewan, with emotion, in Mona’s 
ear. “ Look! this good-nature that seems so good to others 
is almost enough to make me hate him.” 

Mona was startled, and turned to glance into Ewan’s face. 

“ Come, let us go,” said Ewan, with head aside. 

“ Not yet,” said Mona. 

Then Jarvis Kerruish, who had stepped aside for a moment. 


returned and said: 

“ Will you take a wager with me, Mona — a pair of gloves?” 
“ Very well,” she answered. 

“ Who do you bet on?” 

“Oh, on the stranger,” said Mona, coloring slightly, and 
laughing a little. 

“How lucky,” said Jarvis, “ I bet on the captain.” 


116 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ I can stand it no longer,” whispered Ewan, “ will you 
come?” But Mona’s eyes were riveted on the group about 
the oxen. She did not hear, and Ewan turned away, and 
walked out of the meadow. 

Then there was a shout, and the oxen started with Dan be- 
hind them. On they went through the hard, tough ground, 
tranquilly, steadily, with measured pace, tearing through roots 
of trees that lay in their way as if nothing could stop them in 
their great strength. 

When the oxen got back after the first stretch the time was 
called — five minutes thirty seconds — and there was a great 
cheer, and Mona’s pale face was triumphant. 

The stranger brought up his horses, and set off again, 
straining every muscle. He did his stretch in six minutes four 
seconds, and another cheer — but it was a cheer for Dan — 
went up after the figures were called. 

Then Dan whipped round his oxen once more, and brought 
them up to the stake. The excitement among the people was 
now very great. Mona clutched her cloak convulsively, and 
held her breath. Jarvis was watching her closely, and she 
knew that his cold eyes were on her face. 

“ One would almost imagine that you were anxious to loose 
your bet,” he said. She made no answer. When the oxen 
started again her lips closed tightly, as if she was in pain. 

On the oxen went, and made the first half of the stretch 
without a hitch, and, with the blade of the plow lifted, they 
were wheeling over the furrow end when a bell rang across the 
curragh — it was the bell for the midday meal at Bishop’s 
Court— and instantly they came to a dead stand. Dan called 
to them, but they did not budge; then his whip fell heavily 
across their snouts, and they snorted, but stirred not an inch. 
The people were in a tumult, and shouted with fifty voices at 
once. Dan’s passion mastered him. He brought his whip 
down over the flanks and across the eyes and noses of the oxen ; 
they winced under the blows that rained down on them, and 
then shot away across the meadow, tearing up the furrows 
they had made. 

Then there was a cry of vexation and anger from the peo- 
ple, and Dan, who had let go his reins, strode back to the 
stake. “ I’ve lost,” said Dan, with a muttered oath at the 
oxen. 

All this time Jarvis Kerruish had kept his eye steadily fixed 
on Mona’s twitching face. “You’ve won, Mona,” he said, 
in a cold voice and with an icy smile. 


THE DEEMSTER. 117 

“ I must go. Where is Ewan?” she said, tremulously, and 
before Jarvis was aware she had gone over the grass. 

Dan had heard when Ewan declined to act as a judge, he 
had seen when Ewan left the meadow, and, though he did not 
look, he knew when Mona was no longer there. His face was 
set hard, and it glowed red under his sunburned skin. 

“ Davy, bring them up,” he said; and Davy Fayle led 
back the oxen to the front of the stake. 

Then Dan unyoked them, took out the long swinging tree 
that divided them — a heavy wooden bar clamped with iron — 
and they stood free and began to nibble the grass under their 
feet. 

“ Look out!” he shouted, and he swung the bar over his 
shoulder. 

The crowd receded and left an open space in which Dan 
stood alone with the oxen, his great limbs holding the ground 
like their own hoofs, his muscles standing out like bulbs on 
his bare arms. 

“ What is he going to do — kill them?” said one. 

“ Look out!” Dan shouted again, and in another moment 
there was the swish of the bar through the air. Then down 
the bar came on the forehead of one of the oxen, and it reeled, 
and its legs gave way, and it fell dead. 

The bar was raised again, and again it fell, and the second 
of the oxen reeled like the first and fell dead beside its old 
yoke-fellow. 

A cry of horror ran through the crowd, but heeding it not 
at all Dan threw on his coat and buckled his belt about him 
and strode through the people and out at the gate. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE WRONG WAY WITH DAN. 

What happened next was one of those tragedies of bewilder- 
ing motive, so common and so fatal, in which it is impossible 
to decide whether evil passion or evil circumstance plays the 
chief malicious part. 

Dan walked straight to the new Ballamona, and pushed 
through the house without ceremony, as it had been his habit 
to do in other days, to the room where Mona was to be found. 
She was there, and she looked startled at his coming. 

“Is it you, Dan?” she said, in a tremulous whisper. 

He answered sullenly: 

“ It is I. I have come to speak with you— I have some' 
thing to say — but no matter — ” 


118 


THE DEEMSTER. 


He stopped and threw himself into a chair. His head 
ached, his eyes were hot, and his mind seemed to him in dark- 
ness and confusion. 

“ Mona, I think I must be going mad,” he stammered, 
after a moment. 

“ Why talk like that?” she said. Her bosom heaved and 
her face was troubled. 

He did not answer, but after a pause turned toward her, and 
said, in a quick, harsh tone: “ You did not expect to see me 
here, and you have been forbidden to receive me. Is it not 
so?” 

She colored deeply, and did not answer at once, and then 
she began, with hesitation: 

“ My father — it is true, my father-—” 

“ It is so,” he said, sharply. He got on to his feet and 
tramped about the room. After a moment he sat down again, 
and leaned his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. 

“ But what of Ewan?” he asked. 

“ Ewan loves you, Dan, and you have been at fault,” said 
Mona, in broken accents. 

“ At fault?” 

There was a sudden change in his manner. He spoke 
brusquely, even mockingly, and laughed a short, grating 
laugh. 

“ They are taking the wrong way with me, Mona — that’s 
the fact,” he said, and now his breast heaved and the words 
came with difficulty. 

Mona was gazing absently out at the window, her head 
aslant, her fingers interlaced before her. “ Oh, Dan, Dan,” 
she murmured, in a low tone, “ there is your dear, dear fa- 
ther, and Ewan and — and myself—” 

Dan had leaped to his feet again. “ Don’t turn my eyes 
into my head, Mona,” he said. 

He tramped to and fro in the room for a moment, and then 
broke out nervously: “ All last night I dreamed such an ugly 
dream. I dreamed it three times, and, oh, God! what an ugly 
dream it was! It was a bad night, and I was walking in the 
dark, and stumbling first into bogs and then in cart-ruts, 
when all of a sudden a man’s hand seized me unawares. I 
could not see the man, and we struggled long in the darkness, 
and it seemed as if he would master me. He gripped me by 
the waist, and I held him by the shoulders. We reeled and fell 
together, and when I would have risen his knee was on my 
chest. But a great flood of strength seemed to come to me 
and Lffchrew him off, and rose to my feet and closed with him 
■ w/Eb 



“Only, as I say, they’re taking the wrong way with me .”— Page //<?, 


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THE DEEMSTER. 


119 


again, and at last I was over him, covering him, with his back 
across my thigh and my hand set hard in his throat. And all 
this time I heard his loud breathing in the darkness, but never 
once the sound of his voice. Then instantly, as if by a flash 
of lightning, 1 saw the face that was close to mine, and — God 
Almighty! it was my own face— -my own — and it was black 
already from the pressure of my stiff fingers at the throat.” 

He trembled as he spoke, and sat again and shivered, and a 
cold chill ran down his back. 

“ Mona,” he said, half in a sob, “ do you believe in omens?” 

She did not reply. Her breast heaved visibly, and she could 
not speak. 

“Tush!” he said, in another voice, “omens!” and he 
laughed bitterly, and rose again and picked up his hat, and 
then said in a quieter way, “ Only, as I say, they’re taking 
the wrong way with me, Mona. ” 

He had opened the door, and she had turned her swimming 
eyes toward him. 

“ It was bad enough to make himself a stranger to me, but 
why did he want to make you a stranger, too? Stranger, 
stranger?” He echoed the word in a mocking accent, and 
threw back his head. 

“ Dan,” said Mona, in alow, passionate tone, and the blind- 
ing tears rained down her cheeks, “ nothing and nobody can 
make us strangers, you and me — not my father, or your dear 
father, or Ewan, or ” — she dropped her voice to a deep whis- 
per — “ or any misfortune or any disgrace.” 

“ Mona!” he cried, and took a step toward her, and 
stretched out one arm with a yearning gesture. 

But at the next moment he had swung about, and was go- 
ing out at the door. At sight of all that tenderness and 
loyalty in Mona’s face his conscience smote him as it had 
never smitten him before. 

“ Ewan was right, Mona. He is the noblest man on God’s 
earth, and I am the foulest beast on it. ” 

He was pulling the door behind him when he encountered 
Jarvis Kerruish in the hall. That gentleman had just come 
into the house, and was passing through the hall in hat and 
cloak. He looked appalled at seeing Dan there, and stepped 
aside to let him go by; but Dan did not so much as recognize 
his presence by lifting his head as he strode out at the porch. 

With head still bent, Dan had reached the gate to the road 
and pushed through it, and sent it back with a swing and a 
click, when the Deemster walked up to it, and half halted, 
and would have stopped. But Dan went moodily on, and the 


120 


THE DEEMSTER. 


frown on the Deemster’s wizened face was lost on him. He 
did not take the lane toward the old Ballamona, but followed 
the turnpike that led past Bishop’s Court, and as he went by 
the large house behind the trees Ewan came through the 
smaller gate, and turned toward the new Ballamona. They 
did not speak, or even glance at each other’s faces. 

Dan went on until he came to the parish church. There 
was singing within, and he stopped. He remembered that 
this was Christmas-eve. The choir was practicing the psalms 
for the morrow’s services. 

“ Before 1 was troubled, I went wrong; but now have I 
kept Thy word.” 

Dan went up to the church porch, and stood there and 
listened. 

“ It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may 
learn Thy statutes.” 

The wooden door, clamped and barred and worm-eaten and 
cut by knives, was ajar, and from where he stood Dan could 
see into the church. There were the empty pews, the gaunt, 
square, green-clad boxes on which he had sat on many a 
Christmas-eve at Oiel Verree. He could picture the old place 
as it used to be in those days of his boyhood, the sea of faces, 
some solemn and some bubbling over with mischief, the can- 
dles with their ribbons, the old clerk, Will-as-Thorn, standing 
up behind the communion rail with his pitch-pipe in his hand, 
and Hommy-beg, in his linsey-wolsey petticoat, singing lustily 
from a paper held upside down. The singing stopped. Be- 
hind were the hills Slieu Dhoo and Slieu Volley, hidden now 
under a thick veil of mist, and from across the flat curragh 
there came in the silence the low moan of the sea. ‘ 4 Once 
more,” said a voice within the church, and then the psalm 
was sung again. Dan began to breathe easier, he scarce knew 
why, and a great weight seemed to be lifted off his breast. 

As he turned away from the porch a heavy web of cloud was 
sweeping on and sweeping on from over the sea. He looked 
up and saw that a snow-storm was coming, and that the snow- 
cloud would break when it reached the mountains. 

The clock in the gray tower was striking — one — two — three 
— so it was now three o’clock. Dan went down toward the 
creek known as the Lockjaw, under Orris Head. There he 
expected to see old Billy Quilleash and his mates, who had 
liberty to use the “ Ben-my-Ohree ” during the winter months 
for fishing with the lines. When he got to the creek it was 
an hour after high water, and the lugger, with Quilleash and 
Teare, had gone out for cod. Davy Fayle, who, like Dan 


THE DEEMSTER. 


121 


himself, was still wearing his militia belt and dagger, had been 
doing something among scraps of net and bits of old rope, 
which lay in a shed that the men had thrown together for the 
storing of their odds and ends. 

Davy was looking out to sea. Down there a stiff breeze was 
blowing, and the white curves of the breakers outside could 
just be seen through the thick atmosphere. 

“ The storm is coming, Mastha Dan,” said Davy. “ See 
the diver on the top of the white wave out there! D'ye hear 
her wild note?” 

Davy shaded his eyes from the wind, which was blowing 
from the sea, and looked up at the stormy-petrel that was 
careering over the head of the cliff above them and uttering 
its dismal cry. “ Ay, and d'ye see Mother Carey's chickens 
up yonder?” said Davy again. 4 4 The storm’s coming, and 
wonderful quick, too. ” 

Truly, a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terri- 
ble than wind and snow. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE BLIND WOMAN'S SECOND SIGHT. 

Now when Jarvis Kerruish encountered Dan in the act of 
coming out of Mona’s room his surprise was due to something 
more than the knowledge that Dan had been forbidden the 
house. On leaving the meadow after the plowing match, and 
the slaughter of the oxen that followed it, Jarvis had made a 
long circuit of the curragh, and returned to Ballamona by the 
road. He had been pondering on Mona's deportment during 
the exciting part of the contest between Dan and the stranger, 
and had just arrived at obvious conclusions of his own by way 
of explaining the emotion that she could not conceal, when he 
recognized that he was approaching the cottage occupied by 
Hommy-beg and his wife Kerry. A droning voice came from 
within, accompanied by some of the most doleful wails that 
ever arrested mortal ears. 

Jarvis was prompted to stop and enter. He did so, and found 
both the deaf husband and the blind wife at home. Hommy 
was squatting on a low three-legged stool, with his fiddle at 
his shoulder, playing vigorously and singing as he played. It 
was Christmas-eve to Hommy-beg also, and he was practicing 
the carol that he meant to sing at the Oiel Verree that night. 
Blind Kerry was sitting by the fire knitting with gray yarn. 
The deaf man's eyes and the blind woman's ears simultane- 
ously announced the visit of Jarvis, and as Hommy-beg 


122 


THE DEEMSTER. 


dropped his fiddle from his shoulder, Kerry let fall the needles 
on her lap, and held up her hand with an expression of con- 
cern. 

“ Och, and didn't I say that something was happening at 
Ballamona?" said Kerry. 

“ And so she did," said Hommy. 

“ I knew it," said Kerry. “ I knew it, as the sayin' is." 

All this in return for Jarvis's casual visit and mere saluta- 
tion surprised him. 

“ The sight! The sight! It's as true as the ould Book it- 
self. Aw, yes; aw, yes," continued Kerry, and she began to 
wring her hands. 

Jarvis felt uneasy. “ Do you know, my good people," he 
said, largely, “ I'm at a loss to understand what you mean. 
What is it that has happened at Ballamona?" 

At that the face of the blind wife looked puzzled. 

“ Have ye not come from Ballamona straight?" she asked. 

“ No — it's four hours since I left there," said Jarvis. 

“ Aw, dear, aw, dearee dear!" said Kerry. “The sight! 
the sight!" 

Jarvis's uneasiness developed into curiosity, and in answer 
to many questions he learned that blind Kerry had that day 
been visited by another of those visions of Dan which never 
came to her except when her nursling was in some disgrace or 
danger, and never failed to come to her then. On this occa- 
sion the vision had been one of great sorrow, and Kerry trem- 
bled as she recounted it. 

“ I saw him as plain as plain, and he was standing in Mis- 
thress Mona's room, at ween the bed and the wee craythur's 
cot, and he went down on his knees aside of it, and cried, and 
cried, and cried morthal, and Misthress Mona herself was there 
sobbing her heart out, as the sayin' is, and the wee craythur 
was sleeping soft and quiet, and it was dark night outside, and 
the candle was in the misthress's hand. Aw, yes, I saw it, sir, 
1 saw it, and I tould my man here, and, behould ye, he said, 
‘ Drop it, woman, drop it,' says he, ‘ it's only drames, it's 
only drames. ' " 

Jarvis did not find the story a tragic one, but he listened 
with an interest that was all his own. 

“You saw Mr. Dan in Miss Mona's room — do you mean 
her chamber?" 

“ Sure, and he climbed in at the window, and white as a 
haddock, and all amuck with sweat." 

“ Climbed in at the window — the window of her chamber — 
her bedroom — you're sure it was her bedroom?" 


THE DEEMSTER. 


123 


“ Sarten sure. Don’t 1 know it same as my own bit of a 
place? The bed, with the curtains all white and dimity, as 
they’re sayin’, and the wee thing’s cot carved over with the 
lions and the tigers and the beasties, and the goat’s rug, and 
the sheepskin — aw, yes, aw, yes.” 

The reality of the vision had taken such hold of Kerry that 
she had looked upon it as a certain presage of disaster, and 
when Jarvis had opened the door she had leaped to the con- 
clusion that he came to announce the catastrophe that she 
foresaw, and to summon her to Ballamona. 

Jarvis smiled grimly. He had heard in the old days of 
Kerry’s second sight, and now he laughed at it. But the blind 
woman’s stupid dreams had given him an idea, and he rose 
suddenly and hurried away. 

Jarvis knew the Deemster’s weakness, for he knew why he 
found himself where he was. Stern man as the Deemster 
might be, keen of wit and strong of soul, Jarvis knew that 
there was one side of his mind on which he was feebler than a 
child. On that side of the Deemster Jarvis now meant to play 
to his own end and profit. 

He was full to the throat of the story which he had to pour 
into credulous ears that never listened to a superstitious tale 
without laughing at it and mocking at it, and believing it, 
when he stepped into the hall at Ballamona, and came sud- 
denly face to face with Dan and saw the door of Mona’s sit- 
ting-room open before and close behind him. 

Jarvis was bewildered. Could it be possible that there was 
something in the blind woman’s second sight? He had scarce- 
ly recovered from his surprise when the Deemster walked into 
the porch, looking as black as a thunder-cloud. 

“ That man has been here again,” he said. “ Why didn’t 
you turn him out of the house?” 

“ I have something to tell you,” said Jarvis. 

They went into the Deemster’s study. It was a little place 
to the left of the hall, half under the stairs, and with the fire- 
place built across one corner. Over the mantel-shelf a num- 
ber of curious things were hung from hooks and nails — a huge 
silver watch with a small face and great seals, a mask, a blun- 
derbuss, a monastic lamp and a crucifix, a piece of silvered 
glass, and a pistol. 

“ What now?” asked the Deemster. 

Jarvis told the blind woman’s story with variations, and the 
Deemster listened intently and with a look of deadly rage. 

“ And you saw him come out of her room — you yourself saw 
him?” said the Deemster. 


v 


124 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“With my own eyes, dear sir,” said Jarvis. 

The Deemster’s lip quivered. “ My God! it must be true,” 
he said. 

At that moment they heard a foot in the hall, and going to 
the door in his restless tramping to and fro, the Deemster saw 
that Ewan had come into the house. He called to him, and 
Ewan went into the study, and on Ewan going in Jarvis went 
out. 

There was a look of such affright on the Deemster’s face 
that before a word was spoken Ewan had caught the contagion 
of his father’s terror. Then, grasping his son by the wrist in 
the intensity of his passion, the Deemster poured his tale into 
Ewan’s ear. But it was not the tale that blind Kerry had told 
to Jarvis, it was not the tale that Jarvis had told to him; it 
was a tale compounded of superstition and of hate. Blind 
Kerry had said of her certain knowledge that Dan was accus- 
tomed to visit Mona in her chamber at night alone, entering 
in at the window. Jarvis Kerruish himself had seen him there 
— and that very day, not at night, but in the broad daylight, 
Jarvis had seen Dan come from Mona’s room. What? Had 
Ewan no bowels that he could submit to the dishonor of his 
own sister? 

Ewan listened to the hot words that came from his father in 
a rapid and ceaseless whirl. The story was all so fatally cir- 
cumstantial as the Deemster told it; no visions; no sights; no 
sneezings of an old woman; all was clear, hard, deadly, damn- 
ing circumstance, or seemed to be so to Ewan’s heated brain 
and poisoned heart. 

“ Father,” he said, very quietly, but with visible emotion, 
“ you are my father, but there are only two persons alive from 
whose lips I would take a story like this, and you are not one 
of them. ” 

At that word the Deemster’s passion overcame him. “ My 
God!” he cried, “ what have I done that I should not be be- 
lieved by my own son? Would I slander my own daughter?” 

But Ewan did not hear him He had turned away, and was 
going toward the door of Mona’s room. He moved slowly; 
there was an awful silence. Full half a minute his hand rest- 
ed on the door handle, and only then did his nervous fingers 
turn it. 

He stepped into the room. The room was empty. It was 
Mona’s sitting-room, her work-room, her parlor, her nursery. 
Out of it there opened another room by a door at the further 
end of the wall on the left. The door of that other room was 
ajar, and Ewan could hear, from where he now stood quiver- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


125 


ing in every limb, the soft cooing of the child — his child, his 
dead wife’s child — and the inarticulate nothings that Mona, 
the foster-mother, babbled over it. 

“ Boo-loo-la-pa-pa, ”“ Dearee-dearee-dear,” and then the 
tender cooing died off into a murmur, and an almost noiseless 
long kiss on the full round baby-neck. 

Ewan stood irresolute for a moment, and the sweat started 
from his forehead. He felt like one who has been kneeling at 
a shrine when a foul hand besmudges it. He had half swung 
about to go back, when his ear caught the sound of the Deem- 
ster’s restless foot outside. He could not go back: the poison 
had gone to his heart. 

He stepped into the bedroom that led out of the sitting- 
room. Mona raised her eyes as her brother entered. She was 
leaning over the cot, her beautiful face alive with the light of 
a tender love — a very vision of pure and delicious womanhood. 
Almost she had lifted the child from the cot to Ewan’s arms 
when at a second glance she recognized the solemn expression 
of his face, and then she let the little one slide back to its pillow. 

“ What has happened?” 

“Is it true,” he began, very slowly, “ that Dan has been 
here?” 

Then Mona blushed deeply, and there was a pause. 

“Is it true?” he said again, and now with a hurried and 
startled look, “ is it true that Dan has been here— here?” 

Mona misunderstood his emphasis. Ewan was standing in 
her chamber, and when he asked if Dan had been there he was 
inquiring if Dan had been with her in that very room. She 
did not comprehend the evil thought that had been put in his 
heart. But she remembered the prohibition placed upon her 
both by Ewan and her father never to receive Dan again, and 
her confusion at the moment of Ewan’s question came of the 
knowledge that contrary to that prohibition she had received 
him. 

“ Is it true?” he asked yet again, and he trembled with the 
passion he suppressed. 

After a pause he answered himself with an awful composure, 
“ It is true.” 

The child lifted itself and babbled at Mona with its innocent 
face all smiles, and Mona turned to hide her confusion by 
leaning over the cot. 

“ Boo — loo — la-la.” 

Then a great wave of passion seemed to come to Ewan, and 
he stepped to his sister, and took her by both hands. He was 
like a strong man in a dream, who feels sure that he can only 


126 


THE DEEMSTER. 


be dreaming — struggling in vain to awake from a terrible 
nightmare, and knowing that a nightmare it must be that sits 
on him and crushes him. 

“ No, no, there must be a mistake; there must, there must,” 
he said, and his hot breathing beat on her face. “ He has 
never been here — here — never.” 

Mona raised herself. She loosed her hands from his grasp. 
Her woman’s pride had been stung. It seemed to her that 
her brother was taking more than a brother’s part. 

“ There is no mistake,” she said with some anger. “ Dan 
has been here.” 

“ You confess it?” 

She looked him straight in the eyes and answered, “Yes, if 
you call it so — I confess it. It is of no use to deceive you.” 

Then there was an ominous silence. Ewan’s features be- 
came death-like in their rigidity. A sickening sense came 
over him. He was struggling to ask a question that his tongue 
would not utter. 

“ Mona — do you mean — do you mean that Dan has — has — 
outrage — Great God! what am I to say? How am I to say it?” 

Mona drew herself up. 

“ 1 mean that I can hide my feelings no longer,” she said. 
“ Do with me as you may; 1 am not a child, and no brother 
shall govern me. Dan has been here — outrage or none — call 
it what you will — yes, and — ” she dropped her head over the 
cot, “ I love him.” 

Ewan was not himself; his heart was poisoned, or then and 
there he would have unraveled the devilish tangle of circum- 
stance. He tried again with another and yet another question. 
But every question he asked, and every answer Mona gave, 
made the tangle thicker. His strained jaw seemed to start 
from his skin. 

“ I passed him on the road,” he said to himself in a hushed 
whisper. “ Oh, that I had but known!” 

Then with a look of reproach at Mona he turned aside and 
went out of the room. 

He stepped back to the study, and there the Deemster was 
still tramping to and fro. 

“ Simpleton, simpleton, to expect a woman to acknowledge 
her own dishonor,” the Deemster cried. 

Ewan did not answer at once; but in silence he reached up 
to where the pistol hung over the mantel-shelf and took it down. 

“ What are you doing?” cried the Deemster. 

“ She has acknowledged it,” said Ewan, still in a suppressed 
whisper. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


12? 


For a moment the Deemster was made speechless and pow- 
erless by that answer. Then he laid hold of his son's hand 
and wrenched the pistol away. 

“No violence/’ he cried. 

He was now terrified at the wrath that his own evil passions 
had arous'ed; he locked the pistol in a cabinet. 

“It is better so/’ said Ewan, and in another moment he 
was going out at the porch. 

The Deemster followed him, and laid a hand on his arm. 

“ Remember— no violence/’ he said; “ for the love of God, 
see there is no violence. " 

But Ewan, without a word more, without relaxing a muscle 
of his hard, white face, without a glance or a sign, but with 
blood-shot eyes and quivering nostrils, with teeth compressed 
and the great veins on his forehead large and dark over the 
scar that Dan had left there, drew himself away, and went out 
of the house. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

HOW EWAK FOUND DAN. 

Ewan went along like a man whose reason was clogged. All 
his faculties were deadened. He could not see properly. He 
could not hear. He could not think. Try as he might to 
keep his faculties from wandering, his mind would not be 
kept steady. 

Time after time he went back to the passage of Scripture 
which he had fixed on that morning for his next lesson and 
sermon. It was the story how Esau, when robbed of the birth- 
right blessing, said in his heart, “ I will slay my brother 
Jacob;" how Jacob fled from his brother's anger to the home 
of Laban; how after many years Esau married the daughter 
of Ishmael, and Jacob came to the country of Edom; how in 
exceeding fear of Esau's wrath Jacob sent before him a present 
for Esau out of the plenty with which God had blessed him; 
and how Jacob lifted up his eyes and beheld Esau, and ran to 
meet him and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed 
him, and they wept. 

Ewan would see the goats and ewes, and the rams, and the 
milch camels toiling along through the hot lush grass by the 
waters of the Jordan; then all at once these would vanish, and 
he would find himself standing alone in the drear winter day, 
with the rumble of the bleak sea far in front, and close over- 
head the dark snow-clouds sweeping on and on. 

His strong emotion paralyzed all his faculties. He could 


128 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


neither fix his mind on the mission on which he had set out, 
nor banish the thought of it. Mission! What was it? At 
one moment he thought he knew, and then his eyes seemed to 
jump from their sockets. “ Am 1 going mad?” he asked 
himself, and his head turned giddy. 

He went on; a blind force impelled him. At length he 
reached the old Ballamona. His own especial room in the 
house was the little book-incased closet, looking oyer the 
curraghs toward the sea — the same that had been the study of 
Gilcrist Mylrea, before he went away and came back as bishop. 

But Ewan turned mechanically toward another part of the 
house and entered a room hung about with muskets and the 
horns of deer, fishing-rods and baskets, a watchman's trunch- 
eon lettered in red, loose pieces of net, and even some horse 
harness. A dog, a brown colly, lay asleep before the fire, and 
over the rannel-tree shelf a huge watch was ticking. 

But Dan was not in his room. Then Ewan remembered in 
a dazed way — how had the memory escaped him so long? — 
that when Dan passed him on the road he was not going home- 
ward, but toward the village. No doubt the man was on his 
way to the low pot-house he frequented. 

Ewan left Ballamona and went on toward the Three Legs of 
Man. He crossed the fields which the bishop had cut off from 
the episcopal demesne for his son's occupation as a farm. As 
he walked, his wandering, aimless thoughts were arrested by 
the neglected state of the land and the stock upon it. In one 
croft the withered stalks of the last crop of cabbage lay rotten 
on the ground; in a meadow a sheep was lying dead of the rot, 
and six or seven of the rest of the flock were dragging their 
falling wool along the thin grass. 

Ewan came out of the fields to the turnpike by the footpath 
that goes by Bishop's Court, and as he passed through the stile 
he heard the bishop in conversation with some one on the road 
within. 

“ What is the balance that 1 owe you, Mr. Looney, for build- 
ing those barns on my son's farm?'' the bishop was saying. 

“ Seven pounds five shilling, my lord,'' the man answered, 
“ and real bad I'm wanting the money, too, my lord, and 
three months I'm afther waiting for it.'' 

“ So you are, Mr. Looney. You would have been paid be- 
fore this if I'd had wherewith to pay you.'' 

Then there was silence between the two, and Ewan was 
going on when the bishop added: 

“ Here — here — take this,'' there was a sound as of the rat- 
tle of keys and seals and a watch-chain — “ It was my old 


THE DEEMSTER. 


129 


lather’s last gift to me, all he had to give to me — God bless 
his memory!— and I little thought to part with it— but there, 
take it and sell it, and pay yourself, Mr. Looney.” 

The man seemed to draw back. 

“ Your watch!” he said, “ Aw, no, no, no! Och, if I’m 
never paid, never, it’s not Patrick Looney that is the man to 
take the watch out of your pocket.” 

“Take it — take it! Why, my good man” — the bishop’s 
voice was all but breaking — 44 you should not refuse to take 
the time of day from } r our bishop.” Then there was a jaunty 
laugh, with a great sob at the back of it. 44 Besides, I’ve 
found the old thing a sore tax on my failing memory this 
many day to wind it and wear it. Come, it will wipe out my 
debt to you. ” 

Ewan went on; his teeth were set hard. Why had he over- 
heard that conversation? Was it to whet his purpose? It 
seemed as if there might be some supernatural influence over 
him. But this was not the only conversation he overheard 
that day. When he got to the Three Legs of Man a carrier’s 
cart stood outside. Ewan stepped into the lobby of the house. 
The old cat was counting up the chalk marks, vertical and 
horizontal, at the back of the cupboard door, and the carrier 
was sitting on a round table recounting certain mad doings at 
Castletown. 

“ 4 Let’s down with the watch and take their lanterns,’ says 
the captain, says he, laughing morthal and a bit sprung, may 
be; and down they went, one a-top o’ the other. Jemmy the 
Red, and Johnny-by-Nite, and all the rest of them, bellowing 
strong, and the capt’n and his pals whipping up their lanterns 
and their truncheons, and away at a slant. Aw, it was right 
fine.” 

The carrier laughed loud at his story. 

“Was that when Mastha Dan was down at Castletown fix- 
ing the business for the Fencibles?” 

“ Aw, yes, woman, and middlin’ stiff it cost him. Next 
morning Jemmy the Red and Johnny- by-Nite were oil for the 
Castle, but the captain met them, and 4 I’m not for denying 
it,’ says he, and ‘ a bit of a spree,’ he says, and 4 Take this. 
Jemmy,’ says he, 4 and say no more.’ ” 

44 And what did he give the watch to sweeten them?” 

44 Three pound, they’re saying. Aw, yes, woman, woman 
— liberal, very. None o’ yer close-fisted about the captain.” 

The blood rushed to Ewan’s heart. In a moment he found 
himself asking for Dan, and hearing from the old woman with 
the whiskers, who spoke with a courtesy after every syllable, 


130 


THE DEEMSTER. 


that Master Dan had been seen to go down toward the creek, 
the Lockjaw, under Orris Head. 

Ewan went out of the pot-house and turned the lane toward 
the creek. What was the mysterious influence on his destiny 
that he of all men must needs overhear two such conversa- 
tions, and hear them now of all times? The neglected lands, 
the impoverished old bishop, the reckless spendthrift, all rose 
before Ewan’s mind in a bewildering haze. 

The lane to the Lockjaw led past the shambles that stood a 
little out of the village. Ewan had often noticed the butcher’s 
low wagon on the road, with sheep penned in by a rope across 
the stern-board, or with a calf in a net. All at once he now 
realized that he was walking behind this wagon, and that a 
dead ox lay on it, and that the driver at the horse’s head was 
talking to a man who plodded along beside him. Ewan’s 
faculties were now more clouded than before, but he could 
hear, with gaps in which his sense of hearing seemed to leave 
him, the conversation between the two men. 

“ Well, well, just to think — killing the poor beast for stop- 
ping when the dinner bell rang at the Coort! And them used 
of it for fifteen years! Aw, well, well.” 

“ He’s no Christian, any way, and no disrespec’.” 

“ Christian? Christian, is it? Brute beast as I’m sayin’. 
The ould bishop’s son? Well, well.” 

Bit by bit, scarcely listening, losing the words sometimes, 
as one loses at intervals the tick of a clock when lying awake 
at night with a brain distraught, Ewan gathered up the story 
of the bad business at the plowing match after he had left the 
meadow. 

“ Christian? Och, Christian?” one of the men repeated 
with a bitter laugh of mockery. “ I’m thinking it would bo 
a middlin’ little crime to treat a Christian like that same as he 
treated the poor dumb craythurs.” 

Ewan’s temples beat furiously, and a fearful tumult was 
rife in his brain. One wild thought expelled all other thoughts. 
Why had he overheard three such conversations? There could 
be but one answer — he was designed by supernatural powers 
to be the instrument of a fixed purpose. It was irrevocably 
decided — he was impelled to the terrible business that was in 
his mind by an irresistible force to which he was blind and 
powerless. It was, it was so. 

Ewan pushed on past the wagon, and heard the men’s voices 
die off to an indistinct mumble behind him. How hideous 
were the meditations of the next few minutes! The beating 
of his temple drew the skin hard about the scar above it. He 



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“ Oh, God, for a moment's strength ! "—Page 131. 






THE DEEMSTEK. 


131 


thought of his young wife in her grave, and of the shock that 
sent her there. He felt afresh the abject degradation of that 
hitter moment in the library at Bishop’s Court, when, to save 
the honor of a forger, he had lied before God and man. Then 
he thought of the gray head of that august old man, serenest 
of saints, fondest of fathers, the bishop, bowed down to the 
dust with shame and a ruined hope. And after his mind had 
oscillated among these agonizing thoughts, there came to him 
over all else, and more hideous than all else, the memory of 
what his own father, the Deemster, had told him an hour ago. 

Ewan began to run, and as he ran all his blood seemed to 
rush to his head, and a thousand confused and vague forms 
danced before his eyes. All at once he recognized that he was 
at the mouth of the creek, going down the steep gate to the 
sea that ended in the Lockjaw. Before he was aware he was 
talking with Davy Fayle, and asking for Dan. He noticed 
that his voice would scarcely obey him. 

“ He’s in the crib on. the shore, sir,” said Davy, and the lad 
turned back to his work. He was hammering an old bent nail 
out of a pitch pine plank that had washed ashore with the last 
tide. After a moment Davy stopped and looked after the 
young parson, and shook his head and muttered something to 
himself. Then he threw down his hammer, and followed 
slowly. 

Ewan went on. His impatience was now feverish. He was 
picturing Dan as he would find him — drinking, smoking, 
laughing, one leg thrown over the end of a table, his cap 
awry, his face red, his eyes bleared, and his lips hot. 

It was growing dark, the snow-cloud was very low overhead, 
the sea-birds were screaming down at the water’s edge, and 
the sea’s deep rumble came up from the shingle below and the 
rocks beyond. 

Ewan saw the tent and made for it. As he came near to it 
he slipped and fell. Regaining his feet, he perceived that in 
the dusk he had tripped over some chips that lay about a 
block. Davy had been chopping firewood of the driftwood 
that the sea had sent up. Ewan saw the hatchet lying among 
the loose chips. In an instant he had caught it up. Recog- 
nizing in every event of that awful hour the mysterious influ- 
ence of supernatural powers, he read this incident as he had 
read all the others. Until then he had thought of nothing but 
the deed he was to do; never for one instant how he was to do 
it. But now the hatchet was thrust into his hand. Thus was 
everything irrevocably decided. 

And now Ewan was in front of the tent, panting audibly, 


132 


THE DEEMSTER. 


the hatchet in his hand, his eyes starting from their sockets, 
the great veins on his forehead hard and black. Now, oh, 
God! for a moment’s strength, one little moment’s strength, 
now, now! 

The smoke was rising from the gorse-covered roof; the lit- 
tle black door was shut. Inside was Dan, Dan, Dan; and 
while Ewan’s young wife lay in her grave, and Ewan’s sister 
was worse than in her grave, and the good bishop was brought 
low, Dan was there, there, and he was drinking and laughing, 
and his heart was cold and dead. 

Ewan lifted the latch and pushed the door open, and stepped 
into the tent. 

Lord of grace and mercy, what was there? On the floor of 
earth in one corner of the small place a fire of gorse, turf, and 
logs burned slowly; and near this fire Dan lay outstretched on 
a bed of straw, his head pillowed on a coil of old rope, one 
hand twisted under his head, the other resting lightly on his 
breast, and he slept peacefully like a child. 

Ewan stood for a moment shuddering and dismayed. The 
sight of Dan, helpless, and at his mercy, unnerved his arm 
and drove the fever from his blood. There was an awful 
power in that sleeping man, and sleep had wrapped him in 
its own divinity. 

The hatchet dropped from Ewan’s graspless fingers, and he 
covered his face. As a drowning man is said to see all his life 
pass before him at the momeut of death, so Ewan saw all the 
past, the happy past — the past of love and of innocence, 
whereof Dan was a part, rise up before him. 

“ It is true, 1 am going mad,” he thought, and he fell back 
on to a bench that stood by the wall. Then there came an 
instant of unconsciousness, and in that instant he was again by 
the waters of the Jordan, and the ewes and the rams and the 
milch camels were toiling through the long grass, and Esau 
was falling on the neck of Jacob, and they were weeping 
together. 


CHAPTER XX 

BLIND PASSION AND PAIN. 

Dan moved uneasily, and presently awoke, opened his eyes, 
and saw Ewan, and betrayed no surprise at his presence there. 
“ Ah! Is it you, Ewan?” he said, speaking quietly, partly in 
a shamefaced way, and with some confusion. “ Do you know, 
I’ve been dreaming of you — you and Mona?” 

Ewan gave no answer. Because sleep is a holy thing, and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


133 


the brother of death, whose shadow also it is, therefore Ewan’s 
hideous purpose had left him while Dan lay asleep at his feet; 
but now that Dan was awake, the evil passion came again. 

“ I was dreaming of that Mother Carey’s chicken — you re- 
member it? when we were lumps of lads, you know — why, you 
can’t have forgotten it — the old thing I caught in its nest just 
under the Head?” 

Still Ewan gave no sign, but looked down at Dan resting on 
his elbows. Dan’s eyes fell from Ewan’s face, but he went on 
in a confused way. 

“Mona couldn’t bear to see it caged, and would have me 
put it back. Don’t you remember I clambered up to the nest, 
and put the bird in again? You were down on the shore, 
thinking sure I would tumble over the Head, and Mona — 
Mona — ” 

Dan glanced afresh into Ewan’s face, and its look of terror 
seemed to stupefy him; still he made shift to go on with his 
dream in an unabashed sort of way. 

“ My gough! if I didn’t dream it all as fresh as fresh, and 
the fight in the air, and the screams when I put the old bird 
in the nest — the young ones had forgotten it clean, and they 
tumbled it out, and set on it terrible, and drove it away — and 
then the poor old thing on the rocks sitting by itself as lone- 
some as lonesome — and little Mona crying and crying down 
below, and her long hair rip-rip-rippling in the wind, and — 
and—” 

Dan had got to his feet, and then seated himself on a stool 
as he rambled on with the story of his dream. But once again 
his shifty eyes came back to Ewan’sface, and he stopped short. 

“ My God, what is it?” he cried. 

Now, Ewan, standing there with a thousand vague forms 
floating in his brain, had heard little of what Dan had said, 
but he had noted his confused manner, and had taken this 
story of the dream as a feeble device to hide the momentary 
discomfiture. 

“ What does it mean?” he said. “ It means that this island 
is not large enough to hold both you and me. ” 

“What?” 

“ It means that you must go away.” 

“ Away!” 

“ Yes — and at once.” 

In the pause that followed after his first cry of amazement, 
Dan thought only of the bad business of the killing of the oxen 
at the plowing match that morning, and so in a tone of utter 
abasement, with his face to the ground, he went on, in a blum 


134 


THE DEEMSTER. 


dering, humble way, to allow that Ewan had reason for his 
anger. 

44 I’m a blind headstrong fool, I know that — and my temper 
is — well, it’s damnable, that’s the fact— but no one suffers 
from it more than I do, and if 1 could have felled myself after 
I had felled the oxen, why down . . . Ewan, for the sake of 
the dear old times when we were good chums, you and I and 
little Mona, with her quiet eyes, God bless her — !” 

“Go away, and never come back to either of us/’ cried 
Ewan, stamping his foot. 

Dan paused, and there was a painful silence. 

44 Why should I go away?” he said, with an effort at quiet- 
ness. 

44 Because you are a scoundrel — the basest scoundrel on God’s 
earth — the foulest traitor — the blackest-hearted monster — ” 

Dan’s sunburned face whitened under his tawny skin. 

44 Easy, easy, man veen, easy,” he said, struggling visibly 
for self-command, while he interrupted Ewan’s torrent of re- 
proaches. 

44 You are a disgrace and a by-word. Only the riff-raff of 
the island are your friends and associates.” 

44 That’s true enough, Ewan,” said Dan, and his head fell 
between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. 

44 What are you doing? Drinking, gambling, roistering, 
cheating — yes — ” 

Dan got on his feet uneasily and took a step to and fro about 
the little place; then sat again, and buried his head in his 
hands as before. 

44 I’ve been a reckless, self-willed, mad fool, Ewan, but no 
worse than that. And if you could see me as God sees me, 
and know how I suffer for my follies and curse them, for all I 
seem to make so light of them, and how I am driven to them 
one on the head of another, perhaps — perhaps — perhaps you 
would have pity — ay, pity.” 

44 Pity? Pity for you? You who have brought your father 
to shame? He is the ruin of the man he was. You have im- 
poverished him; you have spent his substance and wasted it. 
Ay, and you have made his gray head a mark for reproach. 
4 Set your own house in order ’ — that’s what the world says to 
the man of God, whose son is a child of the — ” 

44 Stop!” cried Dan. 

He had leaped to his feet, his fist clinched, his knuckles 
showing like nuts of steel. 

But Ewan went on, standing there with a face that was ashy 
white above his black coat. 44 Your heart is as dead as your 


THE DEEMSTEK. 135 

honor. And that is not all, but you must outrage the honor 
of another.'’ ’ 

Now, when Ewan said this, Dan thought of his forged sig- 
nature, and of the censure and suspension to which Ewan was 
thereby made liable. 

44 Go away,” Ewan cried again, motioning Dan off with his 
trembling hand. 

Dan lifted his eyes. 44 And what if 1 refuse?” he said, in a 
resolute way. 

44 Then take the consequences. ” 

44 You mean the consequences of that — that — that forgery?” 

At this Ewan realized the thought in Dan’s mind, and per- 
ceived that Dan conceived him capable of playing upon his 
fears by holding over his head the penalty of an offense which 
he had already taken upon himself. “Godin heaven!” he 
thought, “ and this is the pitiful creature whom I have all 
these years taken to my heart.” 

44 Is that what your loyalty comes to?” said Dan, and his 
lip curled. 

44 Loyalty,” cried Ewan, in white wrath. 44 Loyalty, and 
you talk to me of loyalty — you who have outraged the honor 
of my sister — ” 

“Mona!” 

44 1 have said it at last, though the word blisters my tongue. 
Go away from the island forever, and let me never see your 
face again. ” 

Dan rose to his feet with rigid limbs. He looked about him 
for a moment in a dazed silence, and put his hand to his fore- 
head as if he had lost himself. 

“ Do you believe that?” he said, in a slow whisper. 

44 Don’t deny it — don’t let me know you for a liar as well,” 
Ewan said, eagerly; and then added in another tone, 44 1 have 
had her own confession. ” 

44 Her confession?” 

44 Yes, and the witness of another.” 

44 The witness of another?” 

Dan echoed Ewan’s words in a vague, half-conscious way. 

Then, in a torrent of hot words that seemed to blister and 
sting the man who spoke them no less than the man who heard 
them, Ewan told all, and Dan listened like one in a stupor. 

There was silence, and then Ewan spoke again in a tone of 
agony. 44 Dan, there was a time when in spite of yourself I 
loved you — yes, though I’m ashamed to say it, for it was 
against God’s own leading; still I loved you, Dan. But let us 
part forever now, and each go his own way, and perhaps. 


136 


THE DEEMSTER. 


though we can never forget the wrong that you have done us, 
we may yet think more kindly of you, and time may help us 
to forgive — ” 

But Dan had awakened from his stupor, and he flung aside. 

“ Damn your forgiveness!” he said hotly, and then, with 
teeth set and lips drawn hard and eyes aflame, he turned upon 
Ewan and strode up to him, and they stood together face to 
face. 

“You said just now that there was not room enough in 
the island for you and me,” he said in a hushed whisper. 
“You were right, but I shall mend your words: if you be- 
lieve what you have said — by Heaven, I'll not deny it for you! 
— there is not room enough for both of us in the world. ” 

“ It was my own thought,” said Ewan, and then for an 
instant each looked into the other's eyes and read the other's 
purpose. 

The horror of that moment of silence was broken by the 
lifting of the latch. Davy Fayle came shambling into the tent 
on some pretended errand. He took off his militia belt with 
the dagger in the sheath attached to it, and hung it on a long 
rusty nail driven into an upright timber at one corner. Then 
he picked up from among some ling on the floor a water-proof 
coat and put it on. He was going out, with furtive glances at 
Dan and Ewan, who said not a word in his presence, and were 
bearing themselves toward each other with a painful con- 
straint, when his glance fell on the hatchet which lay a few 
feet from the door. Davy picked it up and carried it out, 
muttering to himself, “ Strange, strange, uncommon!” 

Hardly had the boy dropped the latch of the door from 
without than Ewan took the militia belt from the nail and 
buckled it about his waist. Dan understood his thought; he 
was still wearing his own militia belt and dagger. There was 
now not an instant's paltering between them — not a word of 
explanation. 

“ We must get rid of the lad,” said Dan. 

Ewan bowed his head. It had come to him to reflect that 
when all was over Mona might hear of what had been done. 
What they had to do was to be done for her honor, or for 
what seemed to be her honor in that blind tangle of passion 
and circumstance. But none the less, though she loved both 
of them now, would she loathe that one who returned to her 
with the blood of the other upon him, 

“ She must never know,” he said. “ Send the boy away 
Then we must go to where this work can be done between you 
and me alone.” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


13 ? 


Dan had followed his thought in silence, and was stepping 
toward the door to call to Davy when the lad came back, 
carrying a log of driftwood for the fire. There were some 
small flakes of snow on his water-proof coat. 

“ Go up to the shambles, Davy,” said Dan, speaking with 
an effort at composure, “ and tell Jemmy Ourghey to keep me 
the ox-horns.” 

Davy looked up in a vacant way, and his lip lagged low. 
“Aw, and didn't you tell Jemmy yourself, and terrible 
particular, too?” 

“ Do you say so, Davy?” 

“ Sarten sure.”g 

“ Then just slip away and fetch them.” 

Davy fixed the log on the fire, tapped it into the flame, 
glanced anxiously at Dan and Ewan, and then in a lingering 
way went out. His simple face looked sad under its vacant 
expression. 

The men listened while the lad's footsteps could be heard on 
the shingle, above the deep murmur of the sea. Then Dan 
stepped to the door and threw it open. 

“ How,” he said. 

It was rapidly growing dark. The wind blew strongly into 
the shed. Dan stepped out, and Ewan followed him. 

They walked in silence through the gully that led from the 
creek to the cliff head. The snow that had begun to fall was 
swirled about in the wind that came from over the sea, and, 
spinning in the air, it sometimes beat against their faces. 

Ewan went along like a man condemned to death. He had 
begun to doubt, though he did not know it, and would have 
shut his mind to the idea if it had occurred to him. "But once 
when Dan seemed to stop as if only half resolved, and partly 
turn his face toward him, Ewan mistook his intention. “ He 
is going to tell me that there is some hideous error,” he 
thought. He was burning for that word. But no, Dan went 
plodding on again, and never after shifted his steadfast gaze, 
never spoke, and gave no sign. At length he stopped, and 
Ewan stopped with him. They were standing on the summit 
of Orris Head 

It was a sad, a lonesome, and a desolate place, in sight of a 
wide waste of common land, without a house, and with never 
a tree rising above the purple gorse and tussocks of long grass. 
The sky hung very low over it; the steep red cliffs, with their 
patches of green in ledges, swept down from it to the shingle 
and the sharp shelves of slate covered with sea-weed. The 
ground-swell came up from below with a very mournful noise* 


138 


THE DEEMSTER. 


but the air seemed to be empty, and every beat of the foot on 
the soft turf sounded near and large. Above their heads the 
sea-fowl kept up a wild clamor, and far out, where sea and 
sky seemed to meet in the gathering darkness, the sea’s steady 
blow on the bare rocks ot the naze sent up a deep, hoarse 
boom. 

Dan unbuckled his belt, and threw off his coat and vest. 
Ewan did the same, and they stood there face to face in the 
thin flakes of snow, Dan in his red shirt, Ewan in his white 
shirt open at the neck, these two men whose souls had been 
knit together as the soul of Jonathan w&s knit to the soul of 
David, and each ready to lift his hand against his heart’s best 
brother. Then all at once a startled cry came from near at 
hand. 

It was Davy Fayle’s voice. The lad had not gone to the 
shambles. Kealizing in some vague way that the errand was 
a subterfuge and that mischief was about, he had hidden him- 
self at a little distance, and had seen when Dan and Ewan 
came out of the tent together. Creeping through the ling, 
and partly hidden by the dusk, he had followed the men until 
they had stopped on the Head. Then Davy had dropped to 
his knees. His ideas were obscure, he scarcely knew what was 
going on before his eyes, but he held his breath and watched 
and listened. At length, when the men threw off their clothes, 
the truth dawned on Davy; and though he tried to smother an 
exclamation, a cry of terror burst from his husky throat. 

Dan and Ewan exchanged glances, and each seemed in one 
moment to read the other’s thoughts. In another instant, at 
three quick strides, Dan had taken Davy by the shoulders. 

“Promise,” he said, “that you will never tell what you 
have seen.” 

Davy struggled to free himself, but his frantic efforts were 
useless. In Dan’s grip he was held as in a vise. 

“ Let me go, Mastha Dan,” the lad cried. 

“Promise to hold your tongue,” said Dan; “promise it, 
promise it. ” 

“ Let me go, will you? let me go,” the lad shouted, sullenly 

“ Be quiet,” said Dan. 

“ I won’t be quiet,” was the stubborn answer. “ Help! 
help! help!” and the lad screamed lustily. 

“ Hold your tongue, or by G — ” 

Dan held Davy by one of his great hands hitched into the 
lad’s guernsey, and he lifted the other hand threateningly. 

“Help! help! help!” Davy screamed still louder, and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


139 


struggled yet more fiercely, until his strength was spent, and 
his breath was gone, and then there was a moment’s silence. 

The desolate place was still as desolate as before. Not a 
sign of life around; not an answering cry. 

44 There’s nobody to help you,” said Dan. 44 You have got 
to promise never to tell what you have seen to man, woman, 
or child. ” 

“ 1 won’t promise, and I won’t hold my tongue,” said the 
lad, stoutly. 44 You are goin’ to fight, you and Mastha Ewan, 
and — ” 

Dan stopped him. “ Hearken here. If you are to live an- 
other hour, you will promise — ” 

But Davy had regained both strength and voice. 

4 4 1 don’t care — help! help! help!” he shouted. 

Dan put his hand over the lad’s mouth, and dragged him to 
the cliff head. Below was the brant steep, dark and jagged 
and quivering in the deepening gloom, and the sea-birds were 
darting through the midair like bats in the dark. 

44 Look,” said Dan, 44 you’ve got to swear never to tell what 
you have seen to-night, so help you God.” 

The lad, held tightly by the breast and throat, and gripping 
the arms that held him with fingers that clung like claws, 
took one horrified glance down into the darkness. He strug- 
gled no longer. His face was very pitiful to see. 

44 I can not promise,” he said, in a voice like a cry. 

At that answer Dan drew Davy back from the cliff edge, 
and loosed his hold of him. He was abashed and ashamed. 
He felt himself a little man by the side of this half-daft fisher- 
lad. 

All this time Ewan had stood aside looking on while Dan 
demanded the promise, and saying nothing. Now he went up 
to Davy, and said in a quiet voice: 

44 Davy, if you should ever tell any one what you have seen, 
Dan will be a lost man all his life hereafter.” 

44 Then let him pitch me over the cliff,” said Davy, in a 
smothered cry. 

44 Listen to me, Davy,” Ewan went on; 44 you’re a brave 
lad, 44 and 1 know what’s in your head, but — ” 

44 Then what for do you want to fight him?” Davy broke out. 
The lad’s throat was dry and husky, and his eyes were grow- 
ing dim. 

Ewan paused. Half his passion was spent. Davy’s poor 
dense head had found him a question that he could not 
answer. 

44 Davy, if you don’t promise, you will ruin Dan— yes, it 


140 


THE DEEMSTER. 


will be you who will ruin him, you, remember that. He will 
be a lost man, and my sister, my good sister Mona, she will be 
a broken-hearted woman.” 

Then Davy broke down utterly, and big tears filled his eyes, 
and ran down his cheeks. 

“ I promise,” he sobbed. 

“ Good lad — now go.” 

Davy turned about, and went away, at first running, and 
then dragging slowly, then running again, and then again 
lingering. 

What followed was a very pitiful conflict of emotion. 
Nature, who looks down pitilessly on man and his big, little 
passions, that clamor so loud but never touch her at all — even 
nature played her part in this tragedy. 

When Davy Fayle was gone, Dan and Ewan stood face to 
face as before, Dan with his back to the cliff, Ewan with his 
face to the sea. Then, without a word, each turned aside and 
picked up his militia belt. 

The snow-flakes had thickened during the last few moments, 
but now they seemed to cease and the sky to lighten. Sud- 
denly in the west the sky was cloven as though by the sweep of 
a sword, and under a black bar of cloud, and above a silvered 
water-line the sun came through very red and hazy in its set- 
ting, and with its ragged streamers around it. 

Ewan was buckling the belt about his waist when the setting 
sun rose upon them, and all at once there came to him the 
Scripture that says, “ Let not the sun go down on your 
wrath.” If God’s hand had appeared in the heavens, the 
effect on Ewan could not have been greater. Already his 
passion was more than half gone, and now it melted entirely 
away. 

“ Dan,” he cried, and his voice was a sob, “ Dan, I can 
not fight — right or wrong I can not,” and he flung himself 
down, and the tears filled his eyes. 

Then Dan, whose face was afire, laughed loud and bitterly. 
“ Coward,” he said, “ coward and poltroon!” 

At that word all the evil passion came back to Ewan and he 
leaped to his feet. 

“That is enough,” he said; “the belts — buckle them to- 
gether.” 

Dan undertsood Ewan’s purpose. At the next breath the 
belt about Dan’s waist was buckled to the belt about the waist 
of Ewan, and the two men stood strapped together. Then 
they drew the daggers, and an awful struggle followed. 

With breast to breast until their flesh all but touched, and 


THE DEEMSTER. 


141 


with thighs intwined, they reeled and swayed, the right hand 
of each held up for thrust, the left for guard and parry. 
What Dan gained in strength Ewan made up in rage, and the 
fight was fierce and terrible. Dan still with his back to the 
cliff, Ewan still with his face to the sea. 

At one instant Dan, by his great stature, had reached over 
Ewan's shoulder to thrust from behind, and at the next instant 
Ewan had wrenched his lithe body backward and had taken 
the blow in his lifted arm, which forthwith spouted blood 
above the wrist. In that encounter they reeled about, chang- 
ing places, and Ewan's back was henceforward toward the 
cliff, and Dan fought with his face toward the sea. 

It was a hideous and savage fight. The sun had gone down, 
the cleft in the heavens had closed again, once more the thin 
flakes of snow were falling, and the world had dropped back 
to its dark mood. A stormy-petrel came up from the cliff 
and swirled above the men as they fought and made its direful 
scream over them. 

Up and down, to and fro, embracing closely, clutching, 
guarding, and meantime panting hoarsely, and drawing hard 
breath, the two men fought in their deadly hate. At last they 
had backed and swayed to within three yards of the cliff, and 
then Ewan, with the gasp of a drowning man, flung his 
weapon into the air, and Dan ripped his dagger's edge across 
the belts that bound them together, and at the next breath the 
belts were cut, and the two were divided, and Ewan, separated 
from Dan, and leaning heavily backward, was reeling, by force 
of his own weight, toward the cliff. 

Then Dan stood as one transfixed with uplifted hand, and a 
deep groan came from his throat. Passion and pain were gone 
from him in that awful moment, and the world itself seemed 
to be blotted out. When he came to himself, he was standing 
on the cliff head alone. 

The clock in the old church was striking. How the bell 
echoed on that lonely height! One — two — three — four — five. 
Five o'clock! Everything else was silent as death. The day 
was gone. The snow began to fall in thick, large flakes. It 
fell heavily on Dan's hot cheeks and bare neck. His heart 
seemed to stand still, and the very silence itself was awful. 
His terror stupefied him. “ What have I done?" he asked 
himself. He could not think. He covered his eyes with his 
hands, and strode up and down the cliff head, up and down, 
up and down. Then in a bewildered state of semi-conscious- 
ness he looked out to sea, and there far off, a league away, he 
saw a black thing looming large against the darkening sky, 


142 


THE DEEMSTER. 


He recognized that it was a sail, and then perceived that it 
was a lugger, and quite mechanically he tried to divide the 
mainmast and mizzen, the mainsail and yawl-sail, and to note 
if the boat were fetching to leeward or beatiug down the 
channel. 

All at once sea and sky were blotted out, and he could not 
stand on his legs, but dropped to his knees, and great beads 
of perspiration rolled down his face and neck. He tried to 
call “Ewan! Ewan!” but he could not utter the least cry. 
His throat was parched; his tongue swelled and filled his 
mouth. His lips moved, but no words came from him. Then 
he rose to his feet, and the world flowed back upon him ; the 
sea-fowl crying over his head, the shrillness of the wind in 
the snow-capped gorse, and the sea’s hoarse voice swelling 
upward through the air, while its heavy, monotonous blow on 
the beach shook the earth beneath him. If anything else had 
appeared to Dan at that moment, he must have screamed with 
terror. 

Quaking in every limb, he picked up his clothes and turned 
back toward the shore. He was so feeble that he could 
scarcely walk through the snow that now lay thick on the 
short grass. When he reached the mouth of the gully he did 
not turn into the shed, but went on over the pebbles of the 
creek. His blood-shot eyes, which almost started from their 
sockets, glanced eagerly from side to side. At last he saw the 
thing he sought, and now that it was under him, within reach 
of his hand, he dare hardly look upon it. 

At the foot of a jagged crag that hung heavily over from 
the cliff the body of Ewan Mylrea lay dead and cold. There 
was no mark of violence upon it save a gash on the wrist of 
the left hand, and over the wound there was a clot of blood. 
The white face lay deep in the breast, as if the neck had been 
dislocated. There were no other outward marks of injury 
from the fall. The body was outstretched on its back, with 
one arm — the left arm — lying half over the forehead, and the 
other, the right arm, with the hand open and the listless 
fingers apart, thrown loosely aside. 

Dan knelt beside the body, and his heart was benumbed like 
ice. He tried to pray, but no prayer would come, and he 
could not weep. 

“ Ewan! Ewan!” he cried at length, and his voice of agony 
rolled round the corpse like the soughing of the wind. 

“Ewan! Ewan!” he cried again; but only the sea’s voice 
broke the silence that followed. Then his head fell on the 
cold breast, and his arms covered the lifeless body, and he 


THE DEEMSTER. 


143 


cried upon God to have mercy on him, and to lift up His hand 
against him and cut him off. 

Presently he got on his feet, and, scarcely knowing what he 
was doing, he lifted the body in his arms, with the head lying 
backward on his shoulder, and the white face looking up in its 
stony stare to the darkening heavens. As he did so his eyes 
vere raised to the cliff, and there, clearly outlined over the 
black crags and against the somewhat lighter sky, he saw the 
iigure of a man. 

He toiled along toward the shed. He was so weak that he 
could scarce keep on his legs, and when he reached the little 
place at the mouth of the creek, he was more dead than alive. 
He put the body to lie on the bed of straw on which he had 
himself slept and dreamed an hour before. Then all at once 
be felt a low sort of cunning coming over him, and he went 
back to the door and shut it, and drew the long wooden bolt 
into its iron hoop on the jamb. 

He had hardly done so when he heard an impatient footstep 
on the shingle outside. In another instant the latch was lifted 
and the door pushed heavily. Then there was a knock. Dan 
made no answer, but stood very still and held his breath. 
There was another knock, and another. Then in a low trem- 
ulous murmur there came the words: 

“Where is he? God A ’mighty! where is he?” It was 
Davy Fayle. Another knock, louder, and still no reply. 

“ Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan, they’re coming; Mastha Dan, 
God A’mighty! — ” 

Davy \»as now tramping restlessly to and fro. Dan was 
trying to consider what it was best to do, whether to open to 
Davy and hear what he had to say, or to carry it off as if he 
were not within, when another foot sounded on the shingle 
and cut short his meditations. 

“ Have you seen Mr. Ewan — Parson Ewan?” 

Dan recognized the voice. It was the voice of Jarvis Ker- 
ruish. 

Davy did not answer immediately. 

“ Have you seen him, eh?” 

“ No, sir,” Davy faltered. 

‘ ‘ Then why didn’t you say so at once. It is very strange. 
The people said he was walking toward the creek. There’s 
no way out in this direction, is there?” 

“ Way out— this direction? Yes, sir,” Davy stammered, 

“How? Show me the way. ” 

“ By the sea, sir.” 

“ The sea! Simpleton, what are you doing here?” 


144 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Waiting for the boat, sir.” 

“ What shed is this?” 

Dan could hear that at this question Davy was in a fever of 
excitement. 

“ Only a place for bits of net and cable, and all to that,” 
said Davy, eagerly. 

Dan could feel that Jarvis had stepped up to the shed, and 
that he was trying to look in through the little window. 

“ Do you keep a fire to warm your nets and cables?” he 
asked in a suspicious tone. 

At the next moment he was trying to force the door. Dan 
stood behind. The bolt creaked in the hasp. If the hasp 
should give way, he and Javis would stand face to face. 

“ Strange — there’s something strange about all this,” said 
the man outside. “ I heard a scream as I came over the Head. 
Did you hear anything?” 

“ I tell you I heard nothing,” said Davy, sullenly. 

Dan grew dizzy, and, groping for something to cling to, his 
hand scraped across the door. 

“Wait! I could have sworn I heard something move inside. 
Who keeps the key of this shed?” 

“ Kay? There’s never a kay at the like of it.” 

“ Then how is it fastened? From within? Wait — let me 
see.” 

There was a sound like the brushing of a hand over the out- 
side face of the door. 

“ Has the snow stopped up the key -hole, or is there no such 
thing? Or is the door fastened by a padlock?” 

Dan had regained his self-possession by this time. He felt 
an impulse to throw the door open. He groped at his waist 
for the dagger, but belt and dagger were both gone. 

“ All this is very strange,” said Jarvis, and then he seemed 
to turn from the door and move away. 

“ Stop. Where is the man Dan — the captain?” he asked, 
from a little distance. 

“ I dunno,” said Davy, stoutly. 

“ That’s a lie, my lad.” 

Then the man’s footsteps went off in dull beats on the snow- 
clotted pebbles. 

After a moment’s silence there was a soft knocking; Davy 
had crept up to the door. 

“ Mastha Dan,” he whispered, amid panting breath. 

Dan did not stir. The latch was lifted in vain. 

“ Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan. ” The soft knocking continued. 

Dan found his voice at last. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


145 


“ Go away, Davy; go away,” he said, hoarsely. 

There was a short pause, and then there came from without 
an answer like a sob. 

“ Fm going, Mastha Dan.” 

After that all was silent as death. Half an hour later, Dan 
Mylrea was walking through the darkness toward Ballamona. 
In his blind misery he was going to Mona. The snow was not 
falling now, and in the lift of the storm the sky was lighter 
than it had been. As Dan passed the old church, he could 
just descry the clock. The snow lay thick on the face, and 
clogged the hands. The clock had stopped. It stood at five 
exactly. 

The blind leading that is here of passion by accident is 
everywhere that great tragedies are done. It is not the evil in 
man’s heart more than the deep perfidy of circumstance that 
brings him to crime. 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT. 

However bleak the night, however dark the mood of the 
world might be, there was a room in Ballamona that was 
bright with one beautiful human flower in bloom. Mona was 
there — Mona of the quiet eyes and the silent ways and the 
little elfish head. It was Christmas-eve with her as with 
other people, and she was dressing the house in hibbin and 
hollin from a great mountain of both, that Hommy-beg had 
piled up in the hall. She was looking very smart and happy 
that night in her short body of homespun turned in from neck 
to waist, showing a white habit-shirt and a white handkerchief 
crossed upon it; a quilted overskirt and linen apron that did 
not fall so low as to hide the open-work stockings and the 
sandal-shoes. Her room, too, was bright and sweet, with its 
glowing fire of peat and logs on the wide hearth, its lamp on 
the square oak table, and the oak settle drawn up between 
them. In one corner of the settle, bubbling and babbling and 
sputtering and cooing amid a very crater of red baize cushions, 
was Mona’s foster-child, Ewan’s motherless daughter, lying on 
her back and fighting the air with clinched fists. 

While Mona picked out the hibbin from the hollin, dissected 
both, made arches and crosses and crowns and rosettes, and 
then sprinkled flour to resemble snow on the red berries and 
the green leaves, she sung an old Manx ballad in snatches, or 
prattled to the little one in that half-articulate tongue that 


146 


THE DEEMSTER. 


comes with the instinct of motherhood to every good woman 
that God ever makes. 

“ I rede ye beware of the Carrasdoo men 
As ye come up the wold; 

I rede ye beware of the haunted glen— ” 

But a fretful whimper would interrupt the singer. 

“ Hush, hush, Ailee darling, hush/’ 

The whimper would be hushed, and again there would be a 
snatch of the ballad: 

“ In Jorby Curragh they dwell alone 
By dark peat bogs, where the willows moan, 

Down in a gloomy and lonely glen—” 

Once again the whimper would stop the song. 

“ Hush, darling; papa is coming to Ailee, yes; and Ailee 
will see papa, yes, and papa will see Ailee, yes, and Ailee — 99 

Then a long, low gurgle, a lovely head leaning over the 
back of the settle and dropping to the middle of the pillow 
like a lark to its nest in the grass, a long liquid kiss on the 
soft round baby legs, and then a perfect fit of baby laughter. 

It was as pretty a picture as the world had in it on that bleak 
Christmas-eve. Whatever tumult might reign without, there 
within was a nest of peace. 

Mona was expecting Ewan at Ballamona that night, and 
now she was waiting for his coming. It was true that when 
he was there three hours ago it was in something like anger 
that they had parted, but Mona recked nothing of that. She 
knew Ewan's impetuous temper no better than his conciliatory 
spirit. He would come to-night as he had promised yester- 
day, and if there had been anger between them it would then 
be gone. 

Twenty times she glanced at the little clock with the lion 
face and the pendulum like a dog’s head that swung above 
the ingle. Many a time, with head aslant, with parted lips, 
and eyes alight, she cried, “ Hark!” to the little one when a 
footstep would sound in the hall. But Ewan did not come, 
and meantime the child grew more and more fretful as her 
bed-time approached. At length Mona undressed her and 
carried her off to her crib in the room adjoining, and sung 
softly to her while she struggled hard with sleep under the 
oak hood with the ugly beasts carved on it, until sleep had 
conquered and all was sileuce and peace. Then, leaving a 
tallow dip burning on the table between the crib and the bed, 
lest perchance the little one should awake and cry from fear of 


THE DEEMSTER. 147 

the darkness, Mona went back to her sitting-room to finish off 
the last bunch of the hibbin and hollin. 

The last bunch was a bit of prickly green, with a cluster of 
the reddest berries, and .Mona hung it oyer a portrait of her 
brother, which was painted by a great artist from England 
when Ewan was a child. The Deemster had turned the por- 
trait out of the dining-room after the painful interview at Bish- 
< p's Court about the loan and surety, and Mona had found it, 
face to the wall, in a lumber-room. She looked at it now with 
a new interest. When she hung the hollin over it she recog- 
nized for the first time a resemblance to the little Aileen whom 
she had just put to bed. How strange it seemed that Ewan 
had once been a child like Ailee! 

Then she began to fee] that Ewan was late in coming, and 
to make conjectures as to the cause of his delay. Her father's 
house was fast becoming a cheerless place to her. More than 
ever the Deemster was lost to her. Jarvis Kerruish, her 
stranger brother, was her father's companion; and this seemed 
to draw her closer to Ewan for solace and cheer. 

Then she sat on the settle to thread some loose berries that 
had fallen, and to think of Dan — the high-spirited, reckless, 
rollicking, headstrong, tender-hearted, thoughtless, brave, 
stubborn, daring, dear, dear Dan — Dan, who was very, very 
much to her in her great loneliness. Let other people rail at 
Dan if they would; he was wrapped up with too many of her 
fondest memories to allow of disloyalty like that. Dan would 
yet justify her belief in him. Oh, yes, he would yet be a great 
man, all the world would say it was so, and she would be very 
proud that he was her cousin — yes, her cousin, or perhaps, 
perhaps— And then without quite daring to follow up that 
delicious train of thought, even in her secret heart, though 
none might look there and say if it was unmaidenly, Mona 
came back to the old Manx ballad and sung to herself another 
verse of it: 


“ Who has not heard of Adair, the youth? 

Who does not know that his soul was truth? 

Woe is me! how smoothly they speak, 

And Adair was brave, and a man, but weak.’' 

All at once her hand went up to her forehead, and the words 
of the old song seemed to have a new significance. Hardly 
had her voice stopped and her last soft note ceased to ring in 
the quiet room, when she thougl t she heard her own name 
called twice — “ Mona! Mona!" 

The voice was Ewan's voice, and it seemed to come from 


148 


THE DEEMSTER. 


her bedroom. She rose from the settle, and went into her 
room. There was no one there save the child. The little one 
was disturbed in her sleep at the moment, and was twisting 
restlessly, making a faint cry. It was very strange. The 
voice had been Ewan’s voice, and it had been deep and 
tremulous as the voice of one in trouble. 

Presently the child settled itself to sleep, all was silent as 
before, and Mona went back to the sitting-room. _ Scarcely 
was she seated afresh when she heard the voice again, and it 
again called her twice by name, “ Mona! Mona!” in the same 
tremulous tone, but very clear and distinct. 

Then tremblingly Mona rose once more and went into her 
room, for thence the voice seemed to come. No one was 
there. The candle burned fitfully, and suddenly the child 
cried in its sleep — that strange night cry that freezes the blood 
of one who is awake to hear it. It was very, very strange. 

Feeling faint, hardly able to keep on her feet, Moo a went 
back to the sitting-room, and opened the door that led into 
the hall. No one seemed to be stirring. The door of her fa- 
ther’s study opposite was closed, and there was talking — the 
animated talking of two persons — within. 

Mona turned back, closed her door quietly, and then, sum- 
moning all her courage, she walked to the window and drew 
the heavy curtains aside. The hoops from which they hung 
rattled noisily over the pole. Putting her face close to the 
glass, and shading her eyes from the light of the lamp behind 
her, she looked out. She saw that the snow had fallen since 
the lamp had been lighted at dusk. There was snow on the 

§ round, and thin snow on the leafless boughs of the trees, 
he could see nothing else. She even pushed up the sash and 

pollprl • 

“ Who is there?” 

But there came no answer. The wind moaned about the 
house, and the sea rumbled in the distance. She pulled the 
sash down again. 

Then, leaving the curtain drawn back, she turned again into 
the room, and partly to divert her mind from the mysterious 
apprehensions that had seized it, she sat down at the little 
harpsichord that stood on the further side of the ingle against 
the wall that ran at right angles from the window. 

At first her fingers ran nervously over the keys, but they 
gained force as she went on, and the volume of sound seemed 
to dissipate her fears. 

“It is nothing,” she thought. “I have been troubled 
about what Ewan said to-day, and I’m nervous — that is all.” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


149 


And as she played her eyes looked not at the finger-board, 
but across her shoulder toward the bare window. Then sud- 
denly there came to her a sensation that made her flesh to 
creep. It was as if from the darkness outside there were eyes 
which she could not see looking steadily in upon her where 
she sat. 

Her blood rushed to her head, she felt dizzy, the playing 
ceased, and she clung by one hand to the candle-rest of the 
harpsichord. Then once more she distinctly heard the same 
deep, tremulous voice call her by her name — “ Mona! Mona!” 

Faint and all but reeling, she rose again, and again made 
her way to the bedroom. As before the child was restless in 
her sleep. It seemed as if all the air were charged. Mona 
had almost fallen from fright when all at once she heard a 
sound that she could not mistake, and instantly she recovered 
some self-possession. 

It was the sound of the window of her sitting-room being 
thrown open from without. She ran back and saw Dan 
Myrlea climbing into the room. 

“Dan!” she cried. 

“ Mona.” 

“ Did you call?” 

“ When?” 

“ Now — a little while ago?” 

“No.” 

A great trembling shook Dan’s whole frame. Mona per- 
ceived it, and a sensation of disaster not yet attained to the 
clearness of an idea took hold of her. 

“ Where is Ewan?” she said. 

He tried to avoid her gaze. “ Why do you ask for him?” 
said Dan, in a faltering voice. 

“ Where is he?” she asked again. 

He grew dizzy and laid hold of the settle for support. The 
question she asked was that which he had come to answer, but 
his tongue clave to his mouth. 

Very pale and almost rigid from the heaviness of a great 
fear which she felt but could not understand, she watched 
him when he reeled like a drunken man. 

“ He has called me three times. Where is he? He was to 
be here to-night,” she said. 

“ Ewan will not come to-night,” he answered, scarcely 
audibly; “ not to-night, Mona, or to-morrow — or ever — no, 
he will never come again. ” 

The horrible apprehension that had taken hold of her 


150 


THfl DEEMSTER. 


leaped to the significance of his words, and, almost before he 
had spoken, a cry burst from her. 

44 Ewan is dead — he is dead; Mona, our Ewan, he is dead!” 
he faltered. 

She dropped to the settle, and cried, in the excess of her 
first despair, 44 Ewan, Ewan, to think that I shall see him no 
more!” and then she wept. All the time Dan stood over her, 
leaning heavily to bear himself up, trembling visibly, and with 
a look of great agony fixed upon her, as if he had not the 
strength to turn his eyes away. 

“ Yes, yes, our Ewan is dead,” he repeated, in a murmur 
that came up from his heart. * 4 The truest friend, the fond- 
est brother, the whitest soul, the dearest, bravest, purest, 
noblest — Oh, God! oh, God! dead, dead! Worse, a hun- 
dred-fold worse— Mona, he is murdered!” 

At that she raised herself up, and a bewildered look was in 
her eyes. 

44 Murdered? No, that is not possible. He was beloved by 
all. There is no one who would kill him — there is no one alive 
with a heart so black!” 

“Yes, Mona, but there is,” he said; 44 there is one man 
with a heart so black. ” 

44 Who is he?” 

44 Who! He is the foulest creature on God’s earth. Oh, 
God in heaven! why was he born?” 

44 Who is he?” 

He bowed his head where he stood before her, and beads of 
sweat started from his brow. 

44 Cursed be the hour when that man was born!” he said, 
in an awful whisper. 

Then Mona’s despair came upon her like a torrent, and she 
wept long. In the bitterness of her heart she cried: 

44 Cursed, indeed, cursed forever! Dan, Dan, you must kill 
him — you must kill that man.” 

But at the sound of that word from her own lips the spirit 
of revenge left her on the instant, and she cried, 44 No, no, 
not that!” Then she went down on her knees and made a 
short and piteous prayer for forgiveness for her thought. 
44 Oh, Father,” she prayed, 44 forgive me. I did not know 
what I said. But Ewan is dead! Oh, Father, our dear Ewan 
is murdered. Some black-hearted man has killed him. 
Vengeance is Thine. Yes, 1 know that. Oh, Father, forgive 
me. But to think that Ewan is gone forever, and that base 
soul lives on. Vengeance is Thine; but, oh. Father, let Thy 
vengeance fall upon him. If it is Thy will, let Thy hand be 


THE DEEMSTEK. 151 

on him. Follow him, Father; follow him with Thy venge- 
ance — ” 

She had flung herself on her knees by the settle, her up- 
turned eyes wide open, and her two trembling hands held 
above her head. Dan stood beside her, and as she prayed a 
deep groan came up from his heart, his breast swelled, and his 
throat seemed to choke. At last he clutched her by the shoul- 
ders and interrupted her prayer, and cried, 4 4 Mona, Mona, 
what are you saying — what are you saying? Stop, stop!” 

She rose to her feet. 44 1 have done wrong,” she said, more 
quietly. 44 He is in God’s hands : Yes, it is for God to punish 
him.” 

Then Dan said in a heart-rending voice: 

44 Mona, he did not mean to kill Ewan— they fought — it 
was all in the heat of blood.” 

Once more he tried to avoid her gaze, and once more, pale 
and immovable, she watched his face. 

44 Who is he?” she asked, with an awful calmness. 

44 Mona, turn your face away from me, and 1 will tell you,” 
he said. 

Then everything swam about her, and her pale lips grew 
ashy. 

44 Don’t you know?” he asked, in a whisper. 

She did not turn her face, and he was compelled to look at 
her now. His glaring eyes were fixed upon her. 

44 Don’t you know?” he whispered again, and then in a 
scarcely audible voice he said, 44 It was I, Mona!” 

At that she grew cold with horror. Her features became 
changed beyond recognition. She recoiled from him, stretched 
her trembling hands before her as if to keep him off. 

44 Oh, horror! Do not touch me!” she cried, faintly, 
through the breath that came so hard. 

44 Do not spare me, Mona,” he said, in a great sob. 44 Do 
not spare me. You do right not to spare me. I have stained 
my hands with your blood.” 

Then she sunk to the settle, and held her head, while he 
stood by her and told her all— all the bitter, blundering truth 
— and bit by bit she grasped the tangled tale, and realized the 
blind passion and pain that had brought them to such a pass, 
and saw her own unwitting share in it. 

And he on his part saw the product of his headstrong wrath, 
and the pitiful grounds for it, so small and so absurd as such 
grounds oftenest are. And together these shipwrecked voy- 
agers on the waters of life sat and wept, and wondered what 


152 THE DEEMSTER. 

evil could be in hell itself if man in his blindness could find 
the world so full of it. 

And Dan cursed himself, and said: 

44 Oh, the madness of thinking that if either were gone the 
other could ever again know one hour’s happiness with you, 
Mona. Ay, though the crime lay hidden, yet would it wither 
and blast every hour. And now, behold, at the first moment, 
I am bringing my burden of sin, too heavy for myself, to 
you. I am a coward — yes, I am a coward. You will turn 
your back upon me, Mona, and then I shall be alone!” 

She looked at him with infinite compassion, and her heart 
surged within her as she listened to his voice of great agony. 

44 Ah, me! and I asked God to curse you,” she said. 44 Oh, 
how wicked that prayer was! Will God hear it? Merciful 
Father, do not hear it. 1 did not know what I said. I am a 
blind, ignorant creature, but Thou seest and knowest best. 
Pity him and forgive him. Oh, no, God will not hear my 
wicked prayer. ” 

Thus in fitful outbursts she talked and prayed. It was as if 
a tempest had torn up every tie of her soul. Dan listened, 
and he looked at her with swimming eyes. 

44 And do you pray for me, Mona?” he said. 

4 4 Who will pray for you if I do not? In all the world there 
will not be one left to speak kindly of you if I speak ill. Oh, 
Dan, it will become known, and every one will be against 
you.” 

44 And can you think well of him who killed your brother?” 

44 But you are in such sorrow; you are so miserable.” 

Then Dan’s great frame shook wofully, and he cried in his 
pain: 44 Mercy, mercy, have mercy! What have I lost? What 
love have 1 lost?” 

At that Mona’s weeping ceased; she looked at Dan through 
her lashes, still wet, and said, in another tone: 

44 Dan, do not think me unmaidenly. If you had done well, 
if you had realized my hopes of you, if you had grown to be 
the good and great man I longed to see you, then, though 1 
might have yearned for you, I would rather have died with my 
secret than speak of it. But now, now that all this is not so, 
now that it is a lost faith, now that by God’s will you are to 
be abased before the whole world — oh, do not think me un- 
maidenly, now I tell you, Dan, that I love you, and have 
always loved you. ” 

44 Mona!” he cried, in a low, passionate tone, and took one 
step toward her and held out his hands. There was an un- 
speakable language in her face. 


THE DEEMSTER. 153 

“ Yes; and that where you go I must go also, though it 
were to disgrace and shame — ” 

She had turned toward him lovingly, yearningly, with heav- 
ing breast. With a great cry he flung his arms about her, and 
the world of pain and sorrow was for that instant blotted out. 

But all the bitter flood came rushing back upon them. He 
put her from him with a strong shudder. 

“ We are clasping hands over a tomb, Mona. Our love is 
known too late. We are mariners cast on a rock within a 
cable’s length of harbor, but cut off from it by a cruel sea that 
may never be passed. We are hopeless within sight of hope. 
Our love is known in vain. It is a vision of what might have 
been in the days that are lost forever. We can never clasp 
hands, for, oh, God! a cold hand is between us and lies in the 
hand of both. ” 

Then again she fell to weeping, but suddenly she arose as 
if struck by a sudden idea. 

“ You will be taken,” she said; “ how can I have forgotten 
it so long? You must fly from the island. You must get 
away to-night. To-morrow all will be discovered.” 

“ I will not leave the island,” said Dan, firmly. “ Can you 
drive me from you?” he said, with a suppliant look. “ Yes, 
you do well to drive me away.” 

“ My love, I do not drive you from me. 1 would have you 
here forever. But you will be taken. Quick, the world is 
wide!” 

“ There is no world for me save here, Mona. To go from 
you now is to go forever, and I would rather die by my own 
hand than face such banishment . 99 

“No, no, not that; never, never that. That would imperil 
your soul, and then we should be divided forever . 99 

1 ‘ It is so already, Mona,” said Dan, with solemnity. “We 
are divided forever — as the blessed are divided from the 
damned.” 

“ Don’t say that, don’t say that.” 

“ Yes, Mona,” he said, with a fearful calmness, “ we have 
thought of my crime as against Ewan, as against you, myself, 
the world, and its law. But it is a crime against God also, and 
surely it is the unpardonable sin.” 

“ Don’t say that, Dan. There is one great anchor of hope. ” 

“ What is that, Mona?” 

“ Ewan is with God. At this moment while we stand here 
together Ewan sees God. ” 

“Ah!” 

Dan dropped to his knees with awe at that thought, and 


154 


THE DEEMSTER. 


drew off the cap which he had worn until then, and bent his 
head. 

“ Yes, he died in anger and in strife,” said Mona; “ but 
God is merciful. He knows the feebleness of His creatures, 
and has pity. Yes, our dear Ewan is with God; now he knows 
what you suffer, my poor Dan; and he is taking blame to 
himself and pleading for you.” 

“ No, no; I did it all, Mona. He would not have fought. 
He would have made peace at the last, but I drove him on. 

‘ I can not fight, Dan/ he said. 1 can see him saying it, and 
the sun was setting. No, it was not fight, it was murder. 
And God will punish me, my poor girl. Death is my just 
punishment — everlasting death. ” 

“ Wait. I know what is to be done.” 

“ What, Mona?” 

“ You must make atonement.” 

“How?” 

“ You must give yourself up to justice, and take the punish- 
ment of the law. And so you will be redeemed, and God will 
forgive you. ” 

He listened, and then said: 

“ And such is to be the end of our love, Mona, born in the 
hour of its death. You, even you, give me up to justice!” 

“ Don’t say that. You will be redeemed by atonement. 
When Ewan was killed it was woe enough, but that you are 
under God’s wrath is worse than if we were all, all slain.” 

“ Then we must bid farewell. The penalty of my crime is 
death.” 

“ No, no; not that.” 

“ I must die, Mona. This, then, is to be our last parting.” 

“ And even if so, it is best. You must make your peace 
with God.” 

“ And you, my last refuge, even you send me to my death. 
Well, it is right, it is just, it is well. Farewell, my poor 
girl; this is a sad parting.” 

“Farewell.” 

“You will remember me, Mona?” 

“ Remember you? When the tears I shed for Ewan are 
dry, I shall still weep for you. ” 

There was a faint cry at that moment. 

“ Hush!” said Mona, and she lifted one hand. 

“ It is the child,” she added. “ Come, look at it.” 

She turned, and walked toward the bedroom. Dan fol- 
lowed her with drooping head. The little one had again been 


THE DEEMSTER. 155 

restless in her sleep, but now, with a long breath, she settled 
herself in sweet repose. 

At sight of the child the great trembling shook Dan’s frame 
again. “ Mona, Mona, why did you bring me here?” he said. 

The sense of his crime came with a yet keener agony when 
he looked down at the child’s unconscious face. The thought 
flashed upon him that he had made this innocent babe father- 
less, and that all the unprotected years were before her wherein 
she must realize her loss. 

He fell to his knees beside the cot, and his tears rained 
down upon it. 

Mona had lifted the candle from the table, and she held it 
above the kneeling man and the sleeping child. 

It was the blind woman’s vision realized. 

When Dan rose to his feet he was a stronger man. 

“Mona,” he said, resolutely, “you are right. This sin 
must be wiped out. ” 

She had put down the candle and was now trying to take 
his hand. 

“ Don’t touch me,” he said, “ don’t touch me.” 

He returned to the other room, and threw open the window. 
His face was turned toward the distant sea, whose low moan 
came up through the dark night. 

“Dan,” she murmured, “do you think we shall meet 
again?” 

“ Perhaps we are speaking for the last time, Mona,” he an- 
swered. 

“ Oh, my heart will break!” she said. “ Dan,” she mur- 
mured again, and tried to grasp his hand. 

“ Don’t touch me. Hot until later — not until — until then.” 

Their eyes met. The longing, yearning look in hers an- 
swered to the wild light in his. She felt as if this were the last 
she was ever to see of Dan in this weary world. He loved her 
with all his great, broken, bleeding heart. He had sinned for 
her sake. She caught both his hands with a passionate grasp. 
Her lips quivered, and the brave, fearless, stainless girl put 
her quivering lips to his. 

To Dan that touch was as fire. With a passionate cry he 
flung his arms about her. For an instant her head lay on his 
breast. 

“ Now go,” she whispered, and broke from his embrace. 
Dan tore himself away, with heart and brain aflame. Were 
they ever to meet again? Yes. At one great moment they 
were yet. to stand face to face. 

The night was dark, but Dan felt the darkness not at all, 


156 


THE DEEMSTER. 


for the night was heavier within him. He went down toward 
the creek. To-morrow he would give himself up to the Deem- 
ster; but to-night was for himself — himself and it. 

He went by the church. A noisy company were just then 
trooping out of the porch into the church-yard. There they 
gathered in little knots, lighted lanterns, laughed, and drank 
healths from bottles that were brought out of their pockets. 

It was the breaking up of the Oiel Verree. 


CHAPTER XXII 

ALONE, ALONE— ALL, ALL ALONE! 

When Dan got down to the creek the little shed was full of 
the fisher-fellows. There were Quilleash, Teare, Crennel, and 
the lad Davy. The men wore their oilskins, as if they had 
just stepped out of the dingy on the beach, and on the floor 
were three baskets of cod and ray, as if they had just set them 
down. The fire of gorse was crackling on the hearth, and 
Davy sat beside it, looking pale and ill. He had watched Dan 
away from the shed, and then, trembling with fear, but gird- 
ing up his young heart to conquer it, he had crept back and 
kept guard by the body. 

“ I couldn't give myself liberty to lave it," he said, half 
fearfully, lifting his eyes to Dan's as Dan entered. Then the 
men, who in the first moment of horror had asked Davy fifty 
questions, and got never an answer to any of them, seemed to 
understand everything at once. They made way for Dan, and 
he strode through them, and looked down at the body, for it 
was still lying where he had left it. He said not a word. 

When the men had time to comprehend in its awful fullness 
what had occurred, they stood together and whispered, cast 
side looks at Dan, and then long searching looks at the body. 
The certainty that Ewan was dead did not at first take hold 
of them. There was no mark of violence on the body except 
the wound above the wrist, and suddenly, while the men stood 
and looked down, the wound bled afresh. Then old Quilleash, 
who was reputed to possess a charm to stop blood, knelt be- 
side Ewan, and while all looked on and none spoke he whis- 
pered his spell in the deaf ear. 

“ A few good words can do no harm," said Crennel, the 
cook, who was a Quaker. 

Old Quilleash whispered again in the dead ear, and then he 
made a wild command to the blood to cease flowing in the 
name of the three godly men who came to Rome— Christ, 
Peter, and Paul. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


157 


There was a minute of silence and the blood seemed to stop. 
The men trembled; Davy, the lad, grew more pale than be- 
fore, and Dan stood as if in a stupor, looking down and seeing 
all, yet seeing nothing. 

Then the old man lifted his tawny face. “ Cha marroo as 
clagli,” he said in another hoarse whisper. “He is dead as a 
stone. '' 

There was a deep groan from the throats of the men; they 
dropped aside, ana awe fell upon them. None of them spoke 
to Dan, and none questioned the lad again; but all seemed to 
understand everything in some vague way. Billy Quilleash 
sat on a block of a tree trunk that stood at one side, and there 
was silence for a space. Then the old man turned his face to 
his mates and said: “ I’m a man for sticking up for a frien', 
I am.” 

At that there was an uneasy movement among the others. 

“ Aw, yes, though, a man should stick to his frien', he 
should, alow or aloft, up or down,” continued Billy; and after 
some twisting and muttering among the other fisher-fellows he 
went on: “ You have to summer and winter a man before you 
know him, and lave it to us to know Mastha Dan. We've 
shared meat, shared work with him, and, d — n me sowl! noth- 
ing will hould me, but I'll stand up for him now, sink or 
swim.'' 

Then one of the fellows said, “Ay,” and another said, 
“ Ay,” and a third — it was Crennel — said, “ A friend in need 
was more preciouser nor goold;” and then old Billy half twist- 
ed his head toward Dan, but never once lifted his eyes to Dan's 
face, and, speaking at him but not to him, said they were rough 
chaps may be, and couldn't put out no talk at all, never being 
used of it, but if there was somethin' wrong, as was plain to 
see, and keepin' a quiet tongue in your head was the way it 
was goin', and buckin' up for them as was afther buckin' up 
for his chums, why, a frien' was a frien', and they meant to 
stand by it. 

At that, these rough sea-dogs with the big hearts in their 
broad breasts took hold of each other's hard hands in a circle 
about the body of Ewan, whose white face looked up at them 
in its stony stare, and there in the little lonely shed by the sea 
they made their mutual pledge. 

All that time Dan had stood and looked on in silence, and 
Davy, sitting by the spluttering fire, sobbed audibly while 
Uncle Billy spoke. 

“ We must put it away,” said old Billy in a low tone, with 
his eyes on the body. 


158 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Ay," said Ned Teare. 

“ What's o'clock?" 

“ A piece past twelve." 

“ Half-flood. It will be near the turn of the ebb at three," 
said Quilleash. 

Not another word of explanation was needed, all under- 
standing that they must take the body of Ewan out to sea, and 
bury it there after three o'clock next morning, so that, if it 
stirred after it was sent down to its long home, it must be 
swept away over the channel. 

“Heise," said one, and he put his hand down to lift the 
body. 

“ Shoo!" 


Dan himself stepped aside to let them pass out. He had 
watched their movements with wide eyes. They went by him 
without a word. When they were gone, he followed them 
mechanically, scarcely knowing what he did. Davy went 
after him. 

The fishermen stepped out into the night. In silence they 
carried the body of Ewan to the dingy that lay on the beach. 
All got into the boat and pushed off. It was very dark now, 
but soon they came athwart the hawse of the ‘ ‘ Ben-my- 
Chree," which was lying at anchor below low water. They 
pulled up, lifted the body over the gunwale, and followed it 
into the fishing-boat. 

“ There's a good taste of a breeze," said old Quilleash. 

In five minutes more they were standing out to sea, with 
their dread freight of horror and crime. They had put the 
body to lie by the hatchways, and again and again they turned 
their heads toward it in the darkness. It was as though it 
might even yet stand up in their midst, and any man at any 
moment might find it face to face with him, eye to eye. 

The wind was fresh outside. It was on their larboard quar- 
ter as they made in long tacks for the north. When they were 
well away the men gathered about the cockpit and began to 
mourn over Ewan, and to recount their memories concerning 
him. 

“ Well, the young pazon's cruise is up, and a rael good 
man any way. " 

“ Aw, yes, there's odds of pazons, but the like of him isn't 
in." 


“Poor Pazon Ewan," said Quilleash, “I remember him 
since he was a wee skute in his mother's arms — and a fine 
lady too. And him that quiet, but thinking a dale may be, 
with his head a piece to starboard and his eyes fixed like a 


THE DEEMSTER. 


159 


figurehead, but more natheral, and tender uncommon. And 
game too. Aw, dear, you should 'a seen him buck up to young 
Dan at whiles.” 

44 Game? A hot temper at him for all, and I wouldn't 
trust but it's been the death of him." 

“ Well, man, lave it at that; lave it, man. Which of us 
doesn't lie ever in a bit of a breeze aither to port or starboard? 
God won't be haid on him for the temper. No, no, God'll 
never be hard on a warm heart because it keeps company with 
a hot head.'' 

“ Aw, but the tender he was!" said Crennel, the Quaker. 
44 And the voice like an urgan when it's like a flute, soft and 
low, and all a-tremblin'! D'ye mind the day ould Betty Kelly 
lost her little gel by the fayver, the one with the slander little 
stalk of a body, and the head like a flower, and the eyes like a 
pair of bumbees playing in it? You mind her, the millish? 
Well, young Pazon Ewan up and went to Ballig-beg imma- 
diently, and ould Betty scraming and crying morthal, and 
she'd die ! so she would, and what for should you live f but 
och, boy, the way the pazon put out the talk at him, and the 
bit of a spell at the prayin' — aw, man alive, he calked the 
seams of. the ould body wonderful." 

4 4 The man was free, as free as free," said old Quilleash. 
44 When he grew up it was, 4 How are you, Billy Quilleash?' 
And when he came straight from the college at Bishop's 
Court, and all the laming at him, and the fine English tongue, 
and all to that, it was 4 And how are you to-day, Billy?' 4 I’m 
middlin' to-day, Mastha Ewan.' Aw, yes, yes, though, a ten- 
der heart at him any way, and no pride at all at all.'' 

The old man's memories were not thrilling to relate, but 
they brought the tears to his eyes, and he wiped them away 
with his sleeve. 

44 Still a quick temper for all, and when his blood was up it 
was batten down your hatches, my boys — a storm's coming," 
said Ned Teare. 

All at once they turned their faces in the darkness to where 
Dan sat on the battened hatches, his elbows on his knees, his 
h<3ad on his hands, and a sort of shame took hold of them at 
afl this praise of Ewan. It was as if every word must enter 
into Dan's soul like iron. Then, hardly knowing what they 
did, they began to beat about to undo the mischief. They 
talked of the Deemster in his relation to his son. 

44 Deed on Ewan — there was not much truck atween them 
— the Deemster and him. It wasn't natheral. It was like as 


160 


THE DEEMSTER. 


if a garpent crawled in his ould sowl, the craythur, and spat 
out at the young pazon.” 

Then they talked of Jarvis Kerruish. 

44 Och, scheming and plannin’ reg’lar, and stirrin’ and stir- 
rin’ and stirrin’ at the diviTs own gruel.” 

44 Aw, the Deemster’s made many a man toe the mark, but 
I'm thinking he’ll have to stand to it when the big day comes. 
I’ll go bail the ould polecat’s got summat to answer for in this 
consarn. ’ ’ 

Dan said nothing. Alone, and giving no sign, he still sat 
on the hatches near where the body lay, and, a little to aft of 
him, Davy Fayle was stretched out on the deck. The lad’s 
head rested, on one hand, and his eyes w T ere fixed with a dog’s 
yearning look on the dark outlines of Dan’s figure. 

They were doubling the Point of Ayr, when suddenly the 
wind fell to a dead calm. The darkness seemed to grow almost 
palpable. 

“ More snow cornin’ — let the boat driff,” said old Billy Quil- 
leash, and the men turned into the cabin, only Dan and the 
body, with Davy, the lad, remaining on deck. 

Then, through the silence and the blank darkness, there 
was the sound of large drops of rain falling on the deck. 
Presently there came a torrent which lasted about ten minutes. 
When the rain ceased the darkness lifted away, and the stars 
came out. This was toward two o’clock, and soon afterward 
the moon rose, but before long it was concealed again by a 
dense black turret cloud that reared itself upward from the 
horizon. 

When Dan stepped aboard, a dull, dense aching at his heart 
was all the consciousness he had. The world was dead to him. 
He had then no clear purpose of concealing his crime, and 
none of carrying out the atonement that Mona had urged him 
to attempt. He was stunned. His spirit seemed to be dead. 
It was as though it could awake to life again only in another 
world. He had watched old Billy w T hen he whispered into 
Ewan’s deaf ear the words of the mystic charm. Without 
will or intention he had followed the men when they came to 
the boat. Later on a fluttering within him preceded the re- 
turn of the agonizing sense. Had he not damned his own soul 
forever? That he had taken a warm human life; that Ewan, 
who had been alive, lay dead a few feet away from him — this 
was nothing to the horrible thought that he himself was going, 
hot and unprepared, to an everlasting hell. 44 Oh, can this 
thing have happened?” his bewildered mind asked itself a 
thousand times as it awoke as often from the half dream of a 


THE DEEMSTER. 


161 


paralyzed consciousness. Yes, it was true that such a thing 
nad occurred. No, it was not a nightmare. He would never 
awake in the morning sunlight, and smile to know that it was 
not true. No, no, true, true, true it was, even until the Day 
of Judgment, and he and Ewan stood once more face to face, 
and the awful voice would cry aloud, 44 Go, get thee hence. ” 

Then Dan thought of Mona, and his heart was nigh to 
breaking. With a dumb longing his eyes turned through the 
darkness toward the land, and while the boat was sailing before 
the wind it seemed to be carrying him away from Mona for- 
ever. The water that lay between them was as the river that 
for all eternity would divide the blessed and the damned. 

And while behind him the men talked, and their voices fell 
on his ear like a dull buzz, the last ray of his hope was flying 
away. When Mona had prompted him to the idea of atone- 
ment, it had come to him like a gleam of sunlight that, 
though he might never, never clasp her hands on earth, in 
heaven she would yet be his, to love for ever and ever. But 
no, no, no; between them now the great gulf was fixed. 

Much of this time Dan Jay on the deck with only the dead 
and the lad Davy for company, and the fishing-boat lay mo- 
tionless with only the lap of the waters about her. The stars 
died off, the darkness came again, and then, deep in the night, 
the first gray streaks stretching along the east foretold the 
dawn. Over the confines of another night the soft daylight 
was about to break, but more utterly lonely, more void to Dan 
was the great waste of waters now that the striding light was 
chasing the curling mists than when the darkness lay dead 
upon it. On one side no object was visible on the waters until 
sky and ocean met in that great half circle far away. On the 
other side was the land that was once called home. 

When the gray light came, and the darkness ebbed away, 
Dan still sat on the hatches, haggard and pale. Davy lay on 
the deck a pace or two aside. A gentle breeze was rising in 
the south-west. The boat had drifted many miles, and was 
now almost due west off Peeltown, and some five miles out to 
sea. The men came up from below. The cold white face by 
the hatchway looked up at them, and at heaven. 

“ We must put it away now,” said Billy Quilleash. 

4 4 Ay, it’s past the turn of the ebb,” said Crennel. 

Not another word was spoken. A man went below and 
brought up an old sail, and two heavy iron weights, used for 
holding down the nets, were also fetched from the hold. There 
was no singing out, no talking. Silently they took up what 
lay there cold and stiff, and wrapped it in the canvas, putting 

13 


162 


THE DEEMSTER. 


one of the weights at the head and another at the feet. Then 
one of the men — it was old Billy himself, because he had been 
a rigger in his young days — sat down with a sail-maker’s needle 
and string, and began to stitch up the body in the sail. 

“Will the string hold?” asked one. 

“ It will last him this voyage out — it’s a short one,” said 
old Billy. 

Awe and silence sat on the crew. When all was made ready, 
the men brought from below a bank* board used for shooting 
the nets. They lifted the body on to it, and then with the 
scudding-pole they raised one end of the board on to the gun- 
wale. It was a solemn and awful sight. Overhead the heavy 
clouds of night were still rolling before the dawn. 

Dan sat on the hatches with his head in his hands and his 
haggard face toward the deck. None spoke to him. A kind 
of awe had fallen on the men in their dealings with him. 
They left him alone. Davy Fayle had got up and was leaning 
against the mitch-board. All hands else gathered round the 
bank-board and lifted their caps. Then old Quilleash went 
down on one knee and laid his right hand on the body, while 
two men raised the other end of the board. “ Dy bishee jeeah 
shin — God prosper you,” murmured the old fisherman. 

“God prosper you,” echoed the others, and the body of 
Ewan slid down into the wide waste of waters. 

And then there occurred one of those awful incidents which 
mariners say have been known only thrice in all the strange 
history of the sea. Scarcely had the water covered up the 
body, when there was a low rumble under the wave circles in 
which it had disappeared. It was the noise of the iron weights 
slipping from the places at the foot and at the head. The 
stitching was giving way, and the weights were tearing open 
the canvas in which the body was wrapped. In another min- 
ute these weights had rolled out of the canvas and sunk into 
the sea. Then a terrible thing happened. The body, free of 
the weights that were to sink it, rose to the surface. The torn 
canvas, not yet thoroughly saturated, opened out, and spread 
like a sail in the breeze that had risen again. The tide was 
not yet strong, for the ebb had only just begun, and the body, 
floating on the top of the water like a boat, began to drive 
athwart the hawse of the fishing-boat straight for the land. 
Nor was the marvel ended yet. Almost instantly a great 
luminous line arose and stretched from the boat’s quarter to- 
ward the island, white as a moon’s water-way, but with no 
moon to make it. Flashing along the sea’s surface for several 
seconds* it seemed to be the finger of God marking the body’s 


THE DEEMSTER. 


183 

path on the waters. Old mariners, who can interpret aright 
the signs of sea and sky^ will understand this phenomenon if 
they have marked closely what has been said of the varying 
weather of this fearful night. 

To the crew of the 4 4 Ben-my-Chree " all that had happened 
bore but one awful explanation. The men stood and stared 
into each other's faces in speechless dismay. They strained 
their eyes to watch the body until— the strange light being 
gone— it became a speck in the twilight of the dawn and could 
be seen no more, it was as though an avenging angel had 
torn the murdered man from their grasp. But the worst 
thought was behind, and it was this: the body of Ewan Mylrea 
would wash ashore, the murder would become known, and they 
themselves, who had thought only to hide the crime of Dan 
Mylrea, would now in the eyes of the law become participators 
in that crime or accessories to it. 

Dan saw it all, and in a moment he was another man. He 
read that incident by another light. It was God's sign to the 
guilty man, saying “ Blood will have blood." The body would 
not be buried; the crime would not be hidden. The penalty 
must be paid. Then in an instant Dan thrust behind him all 
his vague fears, and all his paralyzing terrors. Atonement! 
atonement! atonement! God Himself demanded it. Dan 
leaped to his feet and cried: 44 Come, my lads, we must go 
back — heave, hearty, and away." 

It was the first time Dan had spoken that night, and his 
voice was awful in the men's ears. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

ALOME OH A WIDE, WIDE SEA. 

The wind strengthened, and the men hoisted sail and began 
to beat in to the island. The breeze filled the canvas, and for 
half an hour the jib lay over the side, while the fishing-boat 
scudded along like a startled bird. The sun rose over the 
land, a thin gauze obscuring it. The red light flashed and 
died away and fanned the air as if the wind itself were the sun- 
shine. The men's haggard faces caught at moments a lurid 
glow from it. In the west a mass of bluish cloud rested a lit- 
tle while on the horizon, and then passed into‘a nimbus of gray 
rain-cloud that floated above it. Such was the dawn and sun- 
rise of a fateful day. 

Dan stood at the helm. When a speck that had glided along 
the waters like a specter boat could be no more seen, he gazed 
in silence toward the eastern light and the green shores of 


164 


THE DEEMSTER. 


morning. Then he had a : weet half hour’s blessed respite 
from terrible thoughts. He saw calmly what he had done, 
and in what a temper of blind passion he had done it. “ Sure- 
ly, God is merciful/’ he thought, and his mind turned to 
Mona. It relieved him to think of her. She intertwined her- 
self with his yearning hope of pardon and peace. She became 
part of his scheme of penitence. His lov 7 e for her was to re- 
deem him in the Father’s eye. He was to take it to the foot 
of God’s white throne, and when his guilt came up for judg- 
ment he was to lay it meekly there, and look up into the good 
Father’s face. 

The crew had now recovered from their first consternation, 
and were no longer obeying Dan’s orders mechanically. They 
had come aboard with no clear purpose before them, except 
that of saving their friend; but nature is nature, and a pitiful 
thing at the best, and now every man began to be mainly con- 
cerned about saving himself. One after one they slunk away 
forward and sat on the thwart, and there they took counsel to- 
gether. The wind was full on their starboard beam, the main- 
sail and yawl were bellied out, and the boat was driving 
straight for home. But through the men’s half-bewildered 
heads there ran like a cold blast of wind the thought that 
home could be home no longer. The voices of girls, the prat- 
tle of children, the welcome of wife, the glowing hearth — these 
could be theirs no more. Davy Fayle stayed aft with Dan, 
but the men fetched him forward and began to question him. 

“ ’Tarprit all this mysterious trouble to us,” they said 

Davy held down his head, and made no answer. 

“You were with him — what’s it he’s afther doin’?” 

Still no answer from the lad. 

“ Out with it, you cursed young imp,” said old Billy. 
“ Damn his fool’s face, why doesn’t he spake?” 

“ It’s the mastha’s saycret, and I wunnit tell it,” said Davy. 

“ You wunnit, you idiot waistrel?” 

“ No, I wunnit,” said Davy, stoutly. 

“ Look here, ye beachcomber, snappin’ yer fingers at your 
old uncle that’s afther bringing you up, you pauper — what is 
it goin’ doin’ in the shed yander?” 

“ It’s his saycret,” repeated Davy. 

Old Billy took Davy by the neck as if he had been a sack 
with an open mouth, and brought down his other hand with a 
heavy slap on the lad’s shoulder, 

“ Ger out, you young devil,” hs said. 

Davy took the blow quietly, but he stirred not an inch, and 
he turned on his uncle with great wide eyes. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


165 


4C Ger out, soollop eyes;” and old Billy lifted his hand again. 

“ Aisy, aisy,'' said Crennel, interposing; and then, while 
Davy went back aft, the men compared notes again. 

4 4 It’s plain to see,” said Ned Teare, 44 it's been a quarrel 
and may be a fight, and he's had a piece more than the better, 
as is only natheral, and him a big strapping chap as strong as 
a black ox and as sthraight as the backbone of a herring, and 
he's been in hidlins, and now he's afther takin' a second 
thought, and goin' back and chance it.” 

This reading of the mystery commended itself to all. 

4 4 It's aisy for him to lay high like that,” said Ned again. 
44 If I was the old bishop’s son I'd houd my luff too, and no 
hidlins neither. But we've got ourselvea in for it, so we have, 
and we're the common sort, so we are, and there's never no 
sailin' close to the wind for the like of us.” 

And to this view of the situation there were many gruff as- 
sents. They had come out to sea innocently enough and by a 
kindly impulse, but they had thereby cast in their lot with the 
guilty man; and the guilty man had favor in high places, but 
they had none. Then their tousled heads went together again. 

44 What for shouldn't we lay high, too?” whispered one, 
which, with other whispers, was as much as to say, why should 
they not take the high hand and mutiny, and put Dan into 
irons, and turn the boat's head and stand out to sea? Then 
it would be anywhere, anywhere, away from the crime of one, 
and the guilt of all. 

4 ‘ Hould hard,” said old Billy Quilleash , 44 I'll spake to him- 
self.” 

Dan, at the tiller, had seen when the men went forward, and 
he had also seen when some of them cast sidelong looks over 
their shoulders in his direction. He knew — he thought he 
knew — the thought wherewith their brave hearts were busy. 
They were thinking — so thought Dan— that if he meant to 
throw himself away they must prevent him. But they should 
see that he could make atonement. Atonement? Empty 
solace, pitiful unction for a soul in its abasement, but all that 
remained to him — all, all. 

Old Quilleash went aft, sidled up to the helm, and began to 
speak in a stammering way, splicing a bit- of rope while he 
spoke, and never lifting his eyes to Dan's face. 

44 What for shouldn't we ger away to Shetlands?” he said. 

44 Why to Shetlands?” asked Dan. 

44 Aw^ it’s safe and well we'll be when we're there. Aw, 
yes, I've been there afore to-day. They're all poor men there. 


166 


THE DEEMSTER. 


but right kind; and what's it sayin ; , 6 when one poor man 
helps another poor man, God laughs.' " 

Dan thought he saw into the heart of the old fellow. His 
throat grew hard and his eyes dim, and he twisted his face 
away, keeping one hand on the tiller. They should yet be 
justified of their loyalty, these stout sea-dogs — yes, God help- 
ing him. 

44 No, no, Billy," he said, 44 there's to be no running away. 
We're going back to see it out." 

At that old Quill eash threw off some of his reserve. 

“ Mastha Dan," he said, 44 we came out to sea just to help 
you out of this jeel, and because we've shared work, shared 
meat with you, and a frien' should stand to a frien'; but now 
we're in for it too, so we are, and what you’ll have to stand to 
we'll have to stand to, and it'll be unknownst to the law as we 
are innocent as kittens; and so it's every man for himself and 
God for us all. " 

Then Dan understood them — how had he been blind so long 
to their position? 

4 4 You want me to put about; is that it?" he asked. 

Old Quill eash nodded his head, still keeping his eyes down. 

44 You think you'll be taken with me?" 

Old Quilleash made an abashed mutter of assent. 44 Aw, 
yes, as 'cessories before the fac's," he added. 

At that Dan's great purpose began to waver. 

44 Don't fear, Billy," he said, 44 I'll speak up for you." 

44 And what’ll that go for? Nothin'. Haven’t we been 
tryin' to put it away?" 

44 That's true." 

It was a fearful situation. The cold sweat rose in big beads 
on Dan's forehead. What had he done? He had allowed 
these brave fellows to cast in their lot with him. They were 
with him now for good or ill. He might say they were inno- 
cent, but what would his word avail? And he had no proof. 
They had tried to cover up his crime; they could not cover it; 
God had willed that the crime should not be hidden. And 
now, if he wished to lose his life to save his soul, what right 
had he to take the lives of these men also? The brave fellows 
had wives that waited for them, and children that claimed 
their knees. Atonement? Empty heroics, to be bought at 
the price of the blood of five loyal fellows whose only crime 
was that they had followed him. He had dressed himself in a 
proud armor of self-sacrifice, but a righteous God, that sees 
into the heart of man and hates pride and brings it to the dust* 
had stripped him naked. 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


16 ? 


Dan's soul was in a turmoil. What should he do? On the 
one hand were love, honor, Mona, even everlasting life; and 
on the other were five innocent men. The agony of that mo- 
ment was terrible. Atonement? God must have set His face 
against it. 

Dan’s hand rested on the tiller, but there was no strength 
in his arm, because there was now no resolve in his heart. The 
fishing-boat was about three miles west of Jurby Point, going 
well before the wind. In half an hour more it would run into 
the creek. It was now to act or never. What was he to do? 
What? What? 

It was, then, in that moment of awful doubt, when the will 
of a strong man might have shriveled up, that nature herself 
seemed to give the answer. 

All at once the wind fell again to a dead calm. Then Dan 
knew, or seemed to know, that God was with the men, and 
against him. There was to be no atonement. No, there was 
to be no proud self-sacrifice. 

Dan's listless hand dropped from the tiller, and he flung 
himself down in his old seat by the hatches. The men looked 
into each other's faces and smiled a grisly smile. The sails 
flapped idly; the men furled them, and the boat drifted south. 

The set of the tide was still to ebb, and every boat's length 
south took the boat a fathom further out to sea. This was 
what the men wanted, and they gathered in the cockpit, and 
gave way to more cheerful spirits. 

Dan lay by the hatches, helpless and hopeless, and more 
haggard and pale than before. An unearthly light now fired 
his eyes, and that was the first word of a fearful tale. A 
witch's Sabbath, a devil's revelry, had begun in his distracted 
brain. It was as though he were already a being of another 
world. In a state of wild hallucination he saw his own spec- 
ter, and he was dead. He lay on the deck; he was cold; his 
face was white, and it stared straight up at the sky. The crew 
were busy about him; they were bringing up the canvas and 
the weights. He knew what they were going to do; they were 
going to bury him in the sea. 

Then a film overspread his sight, and when he awoke he 
knew that he had slept. He had seen his father and Mona in 
a dream. His father was very old, the white head was bent, 
and the calm, saintly gaze was fixed upon him. There was a 
happy thought in Mona's face. Everything around her spoke 
of peace. The dream was fresh and sweet and peaceful to 
Dan when he woke where he lay on the deck. It was like the 
sunshine and the caroling of birds and the smell of new-cut 


168 


THE DEEMSTER. 


grass. Was there no dew in heaven for parched lips, no balm 
for the soul of a man accursed? 

Hours went by. The day wore on. A passing breath some- 
times stirred the waters, and again all was dumb, dead, pulse- 
less peace. Hearing only the faint flap of the rippling tide, 
they drifted, drifted, drifted. 

Curious and very touching were the changes that came over 
the feelings of the men. They I ad rejoiced when they were 
first becalmed, but now another sense was uppermost. The 
day was cold to starvation. Death was before them— -slow, 
sure, relentless death. There could be no jugglery. Then let 
it be death at home rather than death on this desert sea! 
Anything, anything but this blind end, this dumb end, this 
dying bit by bit on still waters. To see the darkness come 
again, and the sun rise afresh, and once more the sun sink and 
the darkness deepen, and still to lie there with nothing around 
but the changeless sea, and nothing above but the empty sky, 
and only the eye of God upon them, while the winds and the 
waters lay in His avenging hands — let it rather be death, swift 
death, just or unjust. 

Thus despair took hold of them, and drove away all fear, 
and where there is no fear there is no grace. 

“ Share yn oik shione doom na yn oik nagh nhione dooin, ” 
said old Billy, and that was the old Manx proverb that says 
that better is the evil we know than the evil we do not know. 

And with such shifts they deceived themselves, and changed 
their poor purposes, and comforted their torn hearts. 

The cold, thick, winter day was worn far toward sunset, and 
still not a breath of wind was stirring. Gilded by the sun's 
hazy rays, the waters to the west made a floor of bleared red. 
The fishing-boat had drifted nearly ten miles to the south. If 
she should drift two miles more she must float into the south- 
eastern current that flows under Contrary Head. At the 
thought of that, and the bare chance of drifting into Peeltown 
Harbor, a little of the vague sense of hopelessness seemed to 
lift away. The men glanced across at Dan, and one mur- 
mured: “Let every herring hang by its own gill;" and an- 
other muttered: “ Every man to the mill with his own sack." 

Davy Fayle lay on the deck a few paces from Dan. The 
simple lad tried to recall the good words that he had heard in 
the course of his poor, neglected, battered life. One after one 
they came back to him, most of them from some far-away 
dream-land, strangely bright with the vision of a face that 
looked fondly upon him, and even kissed him tenderly. 
“ Gentle Jesus," and, “ Now I lay me down to sleep " — he 


THE DEEMSTER. 


169 


could remember them both pretty well, and their simple words 
went up with the supplicatory ardor of his great-grown heart 
to the sky on which his eyes were bent. 

The men lounged about, and were half frozen. No one 
cared to go below. None thought of a fire. Silence and death 
were in their midst. Once again their hearts turned to home, 
and now with other feelings. They could see the island 
through the haze, and a sprinkling of snow dotted its purple 
hills. This brought to mind the bright days of summer, and 
out of their hopelessness they talked of the woods, and the 
birds, and the flowers. “ D'ye mind my ould mother's bit of 
a place up the glen," said Crennel, “ an' the wee croft afore 
it swaying and a-flowing same as the sea in the softest taste of 
a south breeze, and the red ling like a rod of goold running 
up the hedge, and the fuchsia stretchin' up the wall of the 
loft, and drooping its red wrack like blood, and the green 
trammon atop of the porch — d'ye mind it?" And the men 
said, “ Ay," and brushed their eyes with their sleeves. Each 
hard man, with despair seated on his rugged face, longed, like 
a sick child, to lay his head in the lap of home. 

It was Christmas-day. Old Quilleash remembered this, and 
they talked of Christmas-days gone by, and what happy times 
they had been. Billy began to tell a humorous story of the 
two deaf men, Hommy-beg, the gardener, and Jemmy Quirk, 
the school-master, singing against each other at Oiel Verree; 
and the old fellow's discolored teeth, with their many gaps be- 
tween, grinned horribly like an ape’s between his frozen jaws 
when he laughed so hard. But this was too tender a chord, 
and soon the men were silent once more. Then, while the 
waters lay cold and clear and still, and the sun was sinking in 
the west, there came floating to them from the land, through 
the breathless air, the sound of the church bells ringing at 
home. 

It was the last drop in their cup. The poor fellows could 
bear up no longer. More than one dropped his head to his 
knees and sobbed aloud. Then old Quilleash, in a husky voice, 
and coarsely, almost swearing as he spoke, just to hide his 
shame in a way, said, spitting from his quid,. “ Some chap 
pray a spell." “ Ay, ay," said another. “ Aw, yes," said a 
third. But no one prayed. “ You, Billy," said Ned Teare. 
Billy shook his head. The old man had never known a prayer. 
“ It was Pazon Ewan that was powerful at prayer," said Cren- 
nel. “ You, Crennel." Crennel could not pray. 

All lay quiet as death around them, and only the faint sound 
of the bells was borne to them as a mellow whisper. Then, 


170 


THE DEEMSTER. 


from near where Dan sat by the hatches, Davy Fayle rose 
silently to his feet. None had thought of him. With the sad 
longing in his big, simple eyes, he began to sing. This was 
what he sung: 

“ Lo! He comes with clouds descending, 

Once for favored sinners slain.” 

The lad's voice, laden with tears, floated away over the great 
waters. The men hung their heads, and were mute. The 
dried-up well of Dan's eyes moistened at last, and down hia 
hard face ran the glistening tears in gracious drops like dew. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

“there's gold oh the cushags yet." 

Them there came a breath of wind. At first it was soft as 
an angel's whisper. It grew stronger, and ruffled the sea. 
Every man lifted his eyes and looked at his mates. Each was 
struggling with a painful idea that perhaps he was the victim 
of a delusion of the sense. But the chill breath of the wind 
was indeed among them. 

“ Isn’t it beginning to puff up from the sou'-west?" asked 
Crennel, in an uncertain whisper. At that old Quilleash 
jumped to his feet. The idea of the supernatural had gone 
from him. “ Now for the sheets and to make sail," he cried, 
and spat the quid. 

One after one the men got up and bustled about. Their 
limbs were well-nigh frozen stiff. All was stir and animation 
in an instant. Pulling at the ropes, the men had begun to 
laugh, yes, with their husky, grating, tear-drowned voices, 
even to laugh through their grisly beards. A grewsome sense 
of the ludicrous had taken hold of them. It was the swift 
reaction from solemn thoughts. When the boat felt her can- 
vas she shook herself like a sea-bird trying her wings, then 
shot off at full flight. 

“Bear a hand there! Lay on, man alive! Why, you're 
going about like a brewing-pan, old fellow. Pull, boy, pull. 
What are your arms for, eh?" Old Quilleash’s eyes, which 
had been dim with tears a moment ago, glistened with grisly 
mischief. “Who hasn't heard that a Manxman's arms are 
three legs?" he said, with a hungry grin. How the men 
laughed! What humor there was now in the haggard old saw! 

“ Where are you for, Billy?" cried Corkell. 

“ Peel, boy. Peel, d — n it. Peel," shouted Quilleash. 

“ Hurroo! Bould fellow! Ha, ha! he, he!" 


THE DEEMSTER. 


171 


“ Hurroo! There’s gold on the cushags yet.” 

How they worked! In two minutes the mast was stepped, 
the mainsail and mizzen were up, and they filled away and 
stood out. From the shores of death they had sailed somehow 
into the waters of life, and hope was theirs once more. 

They began to talk of what had caused the wind. “ It was 
the blessed St. Patrick,” said Corkell. St. Patrick was the 

g atron saint of that sea, and Corkell was more than half a 
atholic, his mother being a fishwife from Kinsale. 

“ St. Patrick be ,” cried Ned Teare, with a scornful 

laugh, and they got to words and at length almost to blows. 

Old Quilleash was at the tiller. “ Drop it,” he shouted, 
“ we’re in the down stream for Contrary, and we’ll be in har- 
bor in ten minutes.” 

“ God A’mighty! it’s running a ten-knots tide,” said Teare. 
In less than ten minutes they were sailing under the castle 
islet up to the wooden pier, having been eighteen hours on the 
water. 

Not a man of the four had given a thought to Dan, whether 
he wished to go back to the island, or to make a foreign port 
where his name and his crime would be unknown. Only the 
lad Davy had hung about him where he sat by the hatches. 
Dan’s pale face w T as firm and resolute, and the dream of a 
smile was on his hard-drawn lips. But his despair had grown 
into courage, and he knew no fear at all. 

The sun was down, the darkness was gathering, and through 
the day mist the dew fog was rising as the fishing-boat put to 
under the lee of a lantern newly lighted, that was stuck out 
from the end of the pier on a pole. The quay was almost de- 
serted. Only the old harbor-master was there, singing out, as 
by duty bound, his lusty oaths at their lumberings. Never 
before did the old grumbler’s strident voice sound so musical 
as now, and even his manifest ill-temper was sweet to-night, 
for it seemed to tell the men that thus far they were not sus- 
pected. 

The men went their way together, and Dan went off alone. 
He took the straightest course home. Seven long miles over 
a desolate road he tramped in the darkness, and never a star 
came out, and the moon, which was in its last quarter, strug- 
gling behind a rack of cloud, lightened the sky sometimes, but 
did not appear. As he passed through Michael he noticed, 
though his mind was preoccupied and his perception obscure, 
that the street was more than usually silent, and that few 
lights burned behind the window-blinds. Even the low porch 
of the Three Legs when Dan came to it was deserted, and 


172 


THE DEEMSTER. 


hardly the sound of a voice came from within the little pot- 
house. Only in a vague way did these impressions communi- 
cate themseives to Dan’s stunned intelligence as he plodded 
along, but hardly had he passed out of the street when he real- 
ized the cause of the desolation. A great glow came from a 
spot in front of him, as of many lanterns and torches burning 
together, and though in his bewilderment he had not noticed 
it before, the lights lighted all the air about them. In the 
midst of these lights there came and went out of the darkness 
the figures of a great company of people, sometimes bright 
with the glare on their faces, sometimes black with the deep 
shadow of the torch-light. 

Obscure as his ideas were, Dan comprehended everything in 
an instant, and, chilled as he was to the heart’s core by the 
terrors of the last night and day, his very bones seemed now to 
grow cold within him. 

It was a funeral by torch-light, and these maimed rites were 
by an ancient usage long disused, but here revived, the only 
burial of one whose death had been doubtful, or whose body 
had washed ashore on the same day. 

The people were gathered on the side of the church-yard 
near to the high-road, between the road and the church. Dan 
crept up to the opposite side, leaped the low cobble wall, and 
placed himself under the shadow of the vestry by the chancel. 
He was then standing beneath the window he had leaped out 
of in his effort to escape the bishop on that Christmas-eve long 
ago of his boyish freak at the Oiel Verree. 

About an open vault three or four mourners were standing, 
and, a little apart from them, a smoking and flickering torch 
cast its light on their faces. There was the bishop, with his 
snowy head bare and deeply bowed, and there by his elbow was 
Jarvis Kerruish in his cloak and beaver, with arms folded un- 
der his chin. And walking to and fro, from side to side, with 
a quick, nervous step, breaking out into alternate shrill cries 
and harsh commands to four men who had descended into the 
vault, was the little restless figure of the Deemster. Behind 
these and about them was the close company of the people, 
with the light coming and going on their faces, a deep, low 
murmur, as of many whispers together, rising out of their 
midst. 

Dan shook frojn head to foot. His heart seemed to stand 
still. He knew on what business the mourners were met; they 
were thereto bury Ewan. He felt an impulse to scream, and 
then another impulse to turn and fly. But he could not utter 
the least cry, and quivering in every limb he could not stir 


THE DEEMSTER. 173 

Standing there in silence he clung to the stone wall with trem- 
bling fingers. 

The body had been lowered to its last home, and the short 
obsequies began. The service for the dead was not read, but 
the bishop stretched out his hands above the open vault and 
prayed. Dan heard the words, but it was as if he heard the 
voice only. They beat on his dazed, closed mind as a sea-gull, 
blown by the wind, beats against a window on a stormy night; 
While the bishop prayed in broken accents, the deep, thick 
boom of the sea came up from the distant shore between the 
low-breathed murmurs of the people. 

Dan dropped to his knees, breathless and trembling. He 
tried to pray, too, but no prayer would come. His mind was 
beaten, and his soul was barren. His father’s faltering voice 
ceased, and then a half-stifled moan burst from his own lips. 
In the silence the moan seemed to fall on every ear, and the 
quick ear of the Deemster was instantly arrested. “ Who’s 
that?” he cried, and twisted about. 

But all was still once more, and then the people began to 
sing. It was a strange sight, and a strange sound; the torches, 
the hard furrowed faces in the flickering light, the white- 
headed bishop, the restless Deemster, and the voices ringing 
out in the night over the open grave. And from where he 
knelt Dan lifted his eyes, and by the light of the torches he 
saw the clock in the church tower; the hands still stood at five. 
He rose to his feet and turned away. His step fell softly on 
the grass of the church-yard. At one instant he thought that 
there were footsteps behind him. He stopped, and stretched 
his arms half fearfully toward the sound. There was nothing. 
After he had leaped the cobble wall he was conscious that he 
had stopped again, and was listening as though to learn if he 
had been observed. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

A RESURRECTION INDEED. 

And now a strange accident befell him — strange enough in 
itself, mysterious in its significance, and marvelous as one of 
God’s own miracles in its results. He was going to give him- 
self up to the Deemster at Ballamona, but he did not any 
longer take the high-road through the village, for he shrunk 
from every human face. Almost without consciousness he 
followed the fenceless cart-track that went by the old lead 
mine known as the Cross Vein. The disused shaft had never 
been filled up and never even inclosed by a rail. It had been 


174 


THE DEEMSTER. 


for years a cause of anxiety, which nothing but its remoteness 
on the lone waste of the headland had served to modify. And 
now Dan, who knew every foot of the waste, and was the last 
man to whom danger from such an occasion might have been 
feared, plodding along with absent mind in the darkness, fell 
down the open shaft. 

The shaft was forty-five fathoms deep, yet Dan was not so 
much as hurt. At the bottom were nearly twenty-five fathoms 
of water, the constant drainage of the old workings, which 
rose almost to the surface, or dropped to a great depth, ac- 
cording to weather. This had broken his fall. On coming to 
the surface, one stroke in the first instant of dazed conscious- 
ness had landed him on a narrow ledge of rock that raked 
downward from the seam. But what was his position when he 
realized it? It seemed to be worse than death itself; it was a 
living death; it was burial in an open grave. 

Hardly had he recovered his senses when he heard something 
stirring overhead. Were they footsteps, those thuds on the 
ear, like the first rumble of a distant thunder-cloud? In the 
agony of fear he tried to call, but his tongue clave to his 
mouth. Then there was some talking near the mouth of the 
shaft. It came down to him like words shouted through a 
black, hollow, upright pillar. 

“ No use, men,” said one speaker, “ not a foot further after 
the best man alive. It’s every man for himself, now, and Fll 
go bail it’s after ourselves they’ll be going next.” 

And then another voice, laden with the note of pain, cried: 
“But they’ll take him. Uncle Billy, they’ll take him, and 
him knowin’ nothin’. ” 

“ Drove it, drove it! Come along, man alive. Lave the 

lad to this d d blather — you’d better. Let’s make a slant 

for it. The f ac’s is agen us. ” 

Dan shuddered at the sound of human voices. Buried, as 
he was, twenty-five fathoms beneath the surface, the voices 
came to him like the voice that the wind might make on a 
tempestuous night if, as it reaches your ear, it whispered 
words and fled away. 

The men had gone. Who were they? What had hap- 
pened? Dan asked himself if he had not remembered one of 
the voices, or both. His mind was stunned and he could not 
think. He could hardly be sure that in very truth he was con- 
scious of what occurred. 

Time passed — he knew not how long or short— and again he 
heard voices overhead, but they were not the voices that he 
had heard before. 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


175 


44 1 apprehend that they have escaped us. But they were 
our men nevertheless. I have had advices from Peel that the 
boat put into the harbor two hours ago. ” 

44 Mind the old lead shaft, sir. ” 

Dan was conscious that a footstep approached the mouth of 
the shaft. 

44 What a gulf! Lucky we didn’t tumble down.” 

There was a short laugh — as of one who was panting after a 
sharp run — at the mouth of Dan’s open grave. 

44 This was the way they took, sir; over the head toward the 
curraghs. They were not half wise, or they would have 
taken the mountains for it. ” 

“ They do not know that we are in pursuit of them. De- 
pend upon it they are following him up to warn him. After 
all, it may have been his voice that the Deemster heard in the 
church-yard. He is somewhere within arm’s reach. Let us 
push on. ” 

The voices ceased, the footsteps died off. Forty feet of dull, 
dead rock and earth had carried the sounds away in an instant. 
44 Stop!” cried Dan, in the hurry of fear. Despair made him 
brave; fear made him fearless. There was no response. He 
was alone once more, but Death was with him. Then in the 
first moment of recovered consciousness he knew whose voice 
it was that he had heard last, and he thanked God that his 
call had not been answered. It was the voice of Jarvis Ker- 
ruish. In agony of despair Dan perceived that the first com- 
pany of men had been Quilleash and the fisher-fellows. What 
fatality had prevented him from crying aloud to the only per- 
sons on earth who could have rescued and saved him? Dan 
realized that his crime was known, and that he was now a 
hunted man. 

It was then that he knew how hopeless was his plight. He 
must not cry for help; he must stand still as death in his deep 
tomb. To be lifted out of this pit by the men who were in 
search of him would be, as it would seem, to be dragged from 
his hiding-place, and captured in a feeble effort to escape. 
What then of his brave atonement? Who would believe that 
he meant to make it? It would be a mockery at which the 
veriest poltroon might laugh. 

Dan saw now that death encircled him on every side. To 
remain in the pit was death; to be lifted out of it was death 
no less surely; to escape was hopeless. But not so soon is 
hope conquered when it is hope of life. Cry for help he must; 
be dragged out of this grave he should, let the issue be what 
it could or would. To lie there and die was not human. To 


176 


THE DEEMSTER. 


live was the first duty, the first necessity, be the price of life 
no less than future death. 

Dan looked up at the sky; it was a small square patch of 
leaden gray against the impenetrable blackness of his prison 
walls. Standing on the ledge of the rock, and steadying him- 
self with one hand, he lifted the other cautiously upward to 
feel the sides of the shaft. They were of rock, and were quite 
precipitous, but had rugged projecting pieces on which it was 
possible to lay hold. As he grasped one of these, a sickening 
pang of hope shot through him, and wounded him worse than 
despair. But it was gone in an instant. The piece of rock 
gave way in his hand, and tumbled into the water below him 
with a hollow splash. The sides of the shaft were of crum- 
bling stone! 

It was then, in that blind laboring of despair, that he asked 
himself why he should struggle with this last of the misfort- 
unes that had befallen him. Was life so dear to him? Not 
so, or, being dear, he was willing to lay it down. Was he not 
about to deliver himself to the death that must be the first 
punishment of his crime? And what, after all, was there to 
choose between two forms of death? Nay, if he must die, who 
was no longer worthy of life, better to die there, none know- 
ing his way of death, than to die on the gallows. 

At that thought his hair rose from its roots. He had never 
rightly put it to himself until now that if he had to die for the 
death of Ewan he must die the death of hanging. That hor- 
ror of hanging which all men have was stronger in Dan than 
in most. With the grim vision before him of a shameful and 
damning death it came to him to tell himself that better, a 
thousand times better, was death in that living tomb than the 
death that awaited him outside it. Then he thought of his 
father, and of the abasement of that good man if so great a 
shame overtook his son, and thereupon, at the same breath 
with a prayer to God that he might die where he was, a horri- 
ble blasphemy bolted from his lips. He was in higher hands 
than his own. God had saved him from himself. At least 
he was not to die on the gallows. He had but one prayer now, 
and it cried in its barrenness of hope, “ Let me never leave 
this place!” His soul was crushed as is the moth that will 
never lift wing again. 

But at that his agony took another turn. He reflected that, 
if God’s hand was keeping him from the just punishment of 
his crime, God was holding him back from the atonement that 
was to wash his crime away. At this thought he was struck 
with a great trembling. He wrestled with it, but it would not 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


177 


be overcome. Had he not parted with Mona with the firm 
purpose of giving himself up to the law? Yet at every hour 
since that parting some impediment had arisen. First, there 
were the men in the shed at the creek, their resolve to bury 
the body, and his own weak acquiescence; then came the dead 
calm out at sea when he stood at the tiller, and the long, 
weary drifting on the wide waters; and now there was this last 
strange accident. It was as if a higher will had willed it that 
he should die before his atonement could be made. His spirit 
sunk yet lower, and he was for giving up all as lost. In the 
anguish of despair he thought that in very deed it must be that 
he had committed the unpardonable sin. This terrible idea 
clung to him like a leech at a vein. And then it came to him 
to think what a mockery his dream of atonement had been. 
What atonement could a bad man make for spilling the blood 
of a good one? He could but send his own wasted life after a 
life well spent. Would a righteous God take that for a just 
balance? Mockery of mockeries! No, no; let him die where 
he now was, and let his memory be blotted out, and his sin be 
remembered no more. 

He tried to compose himself, and pressed one hand hard at 
his breast to quiet the laboring of his heart. He began to 
reckon the moments. In this he had no object, or none save 
only that mysterious longing of a dying man to know how the 
hour drags on. With the one hand that was free he took out 
his watch, intending to listen for the beat of its seconds; but 
his watch had stopped; no doubt it was full of water. His 
heart beat loud enough. Then he went on to count — one, 
two, three. But his mind was in a whirl, and he lost his 
reckoning. He found that he had stopped counting, and for- 
gotten the number. Whether five minutes or fifty had passed 
he could not be sure. 

But time was passing. The wind began to rise. At first 
Dan felt nothing of it as he stood in his deep tomb. He could 
hear its thin hiss over the mouth of the shaft, and that was 
all. But presently the hiss deepened to a sough. Dan had 
often heard of the wind's sob. It was a reality, and no meta- 
phor, as he listened to the wind now. The wind began to 
descend. With a great swoop it came down the shaft, licked 
the walls, gathered voice from the echoing water at the bot- 
tom, struggled for escape, roared like a caged lion, and was 
once more sucked up to the surface, with a noise like the 
breaking of a huge wave over a reef. The tumult of the wind 
in the shaft was hard to bear, but when it was gone it was the 
silence that seemed to be deafening. Then the rain began to 


V 

178 


THE DEEMSTER. 


fall. Dan knew this by the quick, monotonous patter over- 
head. But no rain touched him. It was driven aslant by the 
wind, and fell only against the uppermost part of the walls of 
the shaft. Sometimes a soft thin shower fell over him. It 
was like a spray from a cataract, except that the volume of 
water from which it came was above and not beneath him. 

It was then in the deadly sickness of fear that there came to 
Dan the dread of miscarrying forever if he should die now. 
He seemed to see what it was to die the unredeemed. Not to 
be forgiven, but to be forever accursed, to be cut off from the 
living that live in God's peace — the dead darkness of that 
doom stood up before him. Life had looked very dear to him 
before, but what now of everlasting death? He was as one 
who was dead before his death came. Live he could not, die 
he dared not. His past life rose up in front of him, and he 
drank of memory's very dregs. It was all so fearsome and 
strange that as he recalled its lost hours one by one it was as 
if he were a stranger to himself. He saw himself, like Esau, 
who for a morsel of meat had sold his birthright, and could 
thereafter find no acceptance, though he sought it with tears. 
The Scripture leaped to his mind which says,' 4 4 It is a fearful 
thing to fall into the hands of the living God." 

And then from the past to the future his mind went on in a 
rapid and ceaseless whirl. He saw himself fleeing as from the 
face of a dreadful judge. Tossed with the terror of a dread- 
ful doom, he saw his place in the world, cold, empty, for- 
saken.. He saw his old father too, the saintly bishop, living 
under the burden of a thousand sorrows, while he who was the 
life of the good man's life, but his no longer, was a restless, 
wandering soul, coming as a cold blast of wind between him 
and his heaven. That thought was the worst terror of all, 
and Dan heard a cry burst from his throat that roused echoes 
of horror in the dark pit. 

Then, as if his instinct acted without help from his mind, 
Dan began to contemplate measures for escape. That un- 
expected softness of the rock which had at first appalled him 
began now to give him some painful glimmerings of hope. If 
the sides of the shaft had been of the slate rock of the island 
the ledge he had lain hold of would not have crumbled in his 
hand. That it was soft showed that there must be a vein of 
sandstone running across the shaft. Dan's bewildered mind 
recalled the fact that Orris Head was a rift of red sand and 
soft sandstone. If this vein were but deep enough his safety 
was assured. He could cut niches into it with a knife, and so, 
perhaps, after infinite pain and labor, reach the surface. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


179 


Steadying himself with one hand, Dan felt in his pockets 
for his knife. It was not there! Now indeed his death seemed 
certain. He was icy cold and feverishly hot at intervals. His 
clothes were wet; the water still dripped from them, and fell 
into the hidden tarn beneath in hollow drops. But not to 
hope now would have been not to fear. Dan remembered that 
he had a pair of small scissors which he had used three days 
ago in scratching his name on the sil ver buckle of his militia 
belt. When searching for his knife he had felt it in his 
pocket, and spurned it for resembling the kinfe to the touch 
of his nervous fingers. Now it was to be his sole instrument. 
He found it again, and with this paltry help he set himself to 
his work of escape from the dark, deep tunnel that stood up- 
right. * 

The night was wearing on; hour after hour went by. The 
wind dropped; the rain ceased to patter overhead. Dan toiled 
on step over step. Besting sometimes on the largest and 
firmest of the projecting ledges, he looked up at the sky. 
The leaden gray had changed to a dark-blue, studded with 
stars. The moon arose very late, being in its last quarter, 
and much beset by rain- clouds. It shone a little way down 
the shaft, lighting all the rest. Dan knew it must be early 
morning. One star, a large full globe of light, twinkled 
directly above him. He sat long and watched it, and turned 
again and again in his toilsome journey to look at it. At one 
moment it crept into his heart that the star was a symbol of 
hope to him. Then he twisted back to his work, an^when 
he looked again the star was gone — it had moved beyond his 
ken, it had passed out of the range of his narrow spot of 
heaven. Somehow it had been a 'mute companion. 

Dan's spirit sunk in his cheerless solitude, but he toiled on. 
His strength was far spent. The moon died off, and the stars 
,*went out one after one. Then a deep cloud of darkness over- 
spread the little sky above. Dan knew it must be the dark- 
ness that precedes the dawn. He had reached a ledge of rock 
that was wider than any of the ledges that were beneath it. 
Clearly enough a wooden rafter had lain along it. Dan rested 
and looked up. At that moment he heard the light patter of 
little feet overhead. It was a stray sheep, a lamb of last year’s 
flock, wandering and lost. Though he could not see it he 
knew it was there, and it bleated down the shaft. The melan- 
choly cry of the lost creature in that dismal place touched a 
seared place on Dan's heart, and made the tears which he had 
not shed until now to start from his eyes. What old memory 
did it awaken? He could not recall it at first, but then he 


180 


THE DEEMSTER. 


remembered the beautiful story which he had heard many 
times of the lost lamb that came to the church porch at the 
christening of Ewan. Was it strange that there and then Ms 
thoughts turned to Ewan’s child, the babe that was innocent 
of its great sorrows to come? He began to wish himself a 
little child again, walking by his father’s hand, with all the 
years rolled back, and all the transgressions of the years 
blotted out as a cloud, and with a new spirit sweet and fresh 
where now was a spirit seared and old, and one great aching 
wound. In a moment the outcast lamb went off, sending up, 
as it went, its pitiful cry into the night. Dan was alone once 
more, but that visitation had sweetly refreshed his spirit. 

Then it came back to him to think that of a surety it was 
not all one whether he died where he was, never coming alive 
from his open tomb, or died for his crime before the faces of 
all men. He must live, he must live, though not for life’s 
sake, but to rob death of its worst terrors. And as for the 
impediments that had arisen to prevent the atonement on 
which his mind was set, they were not from God to lay his 
soul outside the reach of mercy, but from the devil to beset 
him and keep him back from the washing away of his sin. 
This thought revived him, and he turned to his task with a 
new resolve. 

His fingers were chilled to the bone, and his clothes clung 
like damp cerements to his body. The meager blades of the 
scissors were worn short; they could not last long. He rose 
to his feet on the ledge of rock, and plunged the scissors into 
the blank wall above him, and at that a fresh disaster seemed 
to overwhelm him. His hand went into soft earth; the vein 
of rock had finished, and above it must be loose, uncertain 
mold! 

He gasped at the discovery. A minute since life had 
looked very dear. Must he abandon his hopes after all? He 
might have been longer vexed with this new fear, but that he 
recalled at that moment the words spoken by Jarvis Kerruish 
as he went by on the road that ran near the mouth of the 
shaft. Was it not clear that Quilleash and the fisher-fellows 
were being pursued as his associates? Without his evidence to 
clear them would they not surely suffer, innocent though they 
might be, and even though he himself lay dead in this place? 
Now, indeed, he saw that he must of a certainty escape from 
this death in life, no difficulties conquering him. 

Dan paused and reflected. As nearly as he could remember, 
he had made twenty niches in the rock. Hence he must be 
fully thirty-five feet from the water and ten from the surface. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


181 


Only ten feet, and then freedom. Yet these ten seemed to 
represent an impossibility. To ascend by holes dug deep in 
the soft earth was a perilous enterprise. A great clot of soil 
might at any moment give way above or beneath him, and 
then he would be plunged once more into the pit. If he fell 
from the side of the shaft he would be more likely than at 
first, when he fell from the top, to strike on one of the pro- 
jecting ledges and be killed before reaching the water. 

There was nothing left but to wait for the dawn. Perhaps 
the daylight would reveal some less hazardous method of es- 
cape. Slowly the dull, dead, impenetrable blackness was 
lifted off. It was as though a spirit had breathed on the 
night, and it fled away. When the woolly hue of morning 
dappled his larger sky, Dan could hear the slow beat of the 
waves on the shore. The coast rose up before his vision then, 
silent, solemn, alone with the dawn. The light crept into his 
prison-house, and he looked down at the deep black tarn be- 
neath him. 

And now hope rose in his heart again. Overhead he saw 
timbers running around and across the shaft. These had been 
used to bank up the earth, and to make two grooves in which 
the ascending and descending cages had once worked. Dan 
lifted up his soul in thankfulness. The world was once more 
full of grace even for him. He could climb from stay to stay, 
and so reach the surface. Catching one of the stays in his up- 
lifted hands, he swung his knee on to another. One stage he 
accomplished, and then how stiff were his joints, and how 
sinewless his fingers! Another and another stage he reached, 
and then four feet and no more were between him and the 
gorse that waved in the light of the risen sun across the mouth 
of his night-long tomb. 

But the rain of years had eaten into these timbers. In some 
places they crumbled, and were rotten. God! how the one on 
which he rested creaked under him at that instant! Another 
minute, and then his toilsome journey would be over. An- 
other minute, and his dead' self would be left behind him, 
buried forever in this grave. Then there would be a resurrec- 
tion in very truth. Yes, truly, God helping him. 

Half an hour later Dan Mylrea, with swimming eyes and a 
big heart, was walking toward the Deemster at Ballamona. 
The flush of the sun newly risen, and the brighter glory of a 
great hope newly born, was on his worn and pallid cheek. 
What terrors had life for him now? It had none. And very 
soon death also would lose its sting. Atonement! atonement! 
It was even as he had thought; a wasted life for a life well 


182 


THE DEEMSTER. 


spent, the life of a bad man for the life of a good one, but all 
he had to give — all, all! 

And when he came to lay his offering at the merciful 
Father’s feet it would not be spurned. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

HOW EWAN CAME TO CHURCH. 

It is essential to the progress of this history that we should 
leave Han were he now is, in the peace of a great soul newly 
awakened, and go back to the beginning of this Christmas -day 
on shore. 

The parish of Michael began that day with all its old ob- 
servances. While the dawn of Christmas morning was strug- 
gling but feebly with the night of Christmas-eve a gang of 
the baser sort went out with lanterns and long sticks into the 
lanes, there to whoop and beat the bushes. It was their 
annual hunting of the wren. Before the parish had sat down 
to its Christmas breakfast two of these lusty enemies of the 
tiny bird were standing in the street of the village with a long 
pole from shoulder to shoulder and a wee wren suspended 
from the middle of it. Their brave companions gathered 
round and plucked a feather from the wren’s breast now and 
again. At one side of the company, surrounded by a throng of 
children, was Hommy-beg, singing a carol and playing his 
own accompaniment on his fiddle. The carol told a tragic 
story of an evil spirit in the shape of a woman who pestered 
the island in the old days, of how the people rose up against 
her to drive her into the sea, and of how she turned herself 
into a wren, and all on the holy day of the blessed St. Stephen. 
A boy, whose black eyes danced with a mischievous twinkle, 
held a crumpled paper upside down before the gardener, and 
from this inverted text and score the unlettered coxcomb pre- 
tended to play and sing. The women came to their doors to 
listen, and the men with their two hands in their breeches’ 
pockets leaned against the ends of their houses and smoked 
and looked on sleepily. 

When the noisy crowd had passed, the street sunk back to 
its customary repose, broken only by the voice of a child — a 
little auburn-haired lassie, in a white apron tucked up in fish- 
wife fashion— crying, “ Shrimps, fine shrimps, fresh shrimps!” 
and then by a lustier voice that drowned the little lassie’s 
tones, and cried, “ Conger— conger eel— fine, ladies — fresh, 
ladies — and bellies as big as bishops! Conger eel — con-ger!” 

It was not a brilliant morning, but the sun was shining 


THE DEEMSTER. 


183 


drowsily through a white haze like a dew fog that hid the 
mountains. The snow of the night before was not quite 
washed away by the sharp rain of the morning; it still lay at 
the eaves of the thatched houses, and among the cobbles of 
the paved pathway. The blue smoke was coiling up through 
the thick air from every chimney when the bells at Bishop's 
Court began to ring for Christmas service. An old woman 
here and there came out of her cabin in her long blue cape 
and her mutch, and hobbled along on a stick to church. Two 
or three men in sea-boats, with shrimping nets over their 
shoulders and pipes in their mouths, sauntered down the lane 
that led by the shambles to the shore. 

Half an hour later, while the bells were still ringing, and 
the people were trooping into the chapel, the bishop came out 
of h;s house and walked down the path toward the vestry. He 
had a worn and jaded look that morning as if the night had 
gone heavily with him, but he smiled when the women courte- 
sied as they passed, and waved his hand when the men fum- 
bled their caps. 

“ Good-morning, and a merry Christmas to you," he said 
as he went by the open porch to Will-as-Thorn, the parish 
clerk, who was tugging at the bell-rope there, bareheaded, 
stripped to his sheepskin waistcoat with its gray flannel sleeves, 
and sweating. 

He hailed Billy the Gawk, too, the hoary old dog turned 
penitent in his latter days. “ A merry Christmas, Billy, and 
may you live to see many of them yet, please God!" 

Billy was leaning against the porch buttress and taking alms 
if any offered them. 

“ Then it's not living it will be, my lord; it's lingering," 
said this old Bartimeus. 

And Jabez Gawne, the sleek little tailor, had the bishop's 
salutation as he passed on in the ancient cloak with many 
buttons. 

“ A merry Christmas to you, Jabez, and a good new year. " 

“ Aw, 'deed, my lord," said Jabez, with a face as long as a 
fiddle, “ if the new year's no better than the ould one, what 
with quiet times and high rents and the children's schooling, 
it's going on the houses I'll be, middlin' safe." 

“Nay, nay, remember our old saying, Jabez: the greater 
the calm the nearer the south wind." 

As the bishop was turning in at the vestry door, blind Kerry 
and her husband Hommy passed him, and he hailed them as 
he had hailed the others. 


184 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ I'm taking joy to see you so hearty, my lord,” said the 
blind woman. 

“ Yes, I’m well, on the whole, thank God!” said the 
bishop; “ and how are you, Kerry?” 

“ I'm in, my lord, I'm in; but distracted mortal with the 
sights. Och, sir, it's allis the sights, and the sights, and the 
sights; and it's Mastha Dan that's in them still. This morn- 
ing, bless ye, when 1 woke, what should it be, behould ye, but 
a company of great ones from the big house itself, going down 
to the church-yard with lanterns. Aw, 'deed it was, sir, my 
lord, begging your pardon, though it's like enough you'll 
think it's wake and a kind of silly, as the sayin' is.” 

The bishop listened to the blind woman's garrulous tongue 
with a downcast head and a look of pain, and said in a sub- 
dued voice as he put his hand on the wooden latch of the 
vestry door: 

“It is not for me to laugh at you, Kerry, woman. All 
night long 1 have myself been tortured by an uneasy feeling, 
which would not be explained or yet be put away. But let us 
say no more, of such mysteries. There are dark places that 
we may never hope to penetrate. Let it content us if, in 
God's mercy and His wisdom, we can see the step that is at 
our feet.” 

So saying, the bishop turned about and passed in at the 
door. Kerry and her husband went into the chapel at the 
west porch. 

“It's just an ould angel he is,” whispered Kerry, reaching 
up to Hommy's ear, as they went by Will-as-Thom. 

“ Aw, yes, yes,” said Hommy-beg, “ a rael ould archangel, 
so he is.” 

And still the bells rang for the service of Christmas morn- 
ing. 

Inside the chapel the congregation was larger than common. 
There was so much hand-shaking and “ taking of joy ” to be 
gone through in the aisles and the pews that Christmas morn- 
ing that it was not at first observed — except by malcontents 
like Billy the Gawk and Jabez Gawne, to whom the wine of life 
was mostly vinegar-— when the hour for beginning the service 
had come and gone. The choir in the west gallery had taken 
their places on either side of Will-as-Thorn's empty seat over 
the clock, with the pitch-pipe resting on the rail above it, 
and, opening their books, they faced about for gossip. Then 
the bell stopped, having rung some minutes longer than was 
its wont; the whispering was hushed from pew to choir, and 


THE DEEMSTER. 185 

only the sound of the turning of the leaves of many books 
disturbed the silence a moment afterward. 

The bishop entered the chancel, and, while he knelt to 
pray, down like corn before a south wind went a hundred 
heads on to the book-rail before the wind of custom. When 
the bishop rose there was the sound of shuffling and settling 
in the pews, followed by some craning of necks in his direction 
and some subdued whispering. 

4 4 Where is Pazon Ewan?” 

“ What's come of the young pazon?” 

The bishop sat alone in the chancel, and gave no sign of 
any intention to commence the service. In the gallery, the 
choir, books in hand, waited for Will-as-Thorn to take his 
seat over the clock; but his place remained empty. Then, to 
the universal surprise, the bell began to ring again. Steadily 
at first and timidly, and after that with lusty voice the bell 
rang out over the heads of the astonished people. Forthwith 
the people laid those same heads together and whispered. 

What was agate of Pazon Ewan? Had he forgotten that he 
had to preach that morning? Blind Kerry wanted to know if 
some of the men craythurs shouldn't just take a slieu round 
to the ould Ballamona and wake him up, as the saying is: but 
Mr. Quirk, in more 44 gintale ” phraseology, as became his 
scholastic calling, gave it out as probable that the young 
pazon had only been making a 44 little deetower ” after break- 
fast, and gone a little too far. 

Still the bell rang, and the uneasy shuffling in the pews 
grew more noticeable. Presently, in the middle of an abridged 
movement of the iron tongue in the loft, the head and shoul- 
ders of Will-as-Thorn appeared in the opening of the green 
curtain that divided the porch from the body of the chapel, 
and the parish clerk beckoned to Hommy-beg. Shambling to 
his feet and down the aisle Hommy obeyed the summons, and 
then, amid yet more vigorous bobbing together of many heads 
in the pews, the school-master, not to be eclipsed at a moment 
of public excitement, got up also and followed the gardener 
into the porch. The whispering had risen to a sibilant hiss 
that deadened even the bell's loud clanguor when little Jabez 
Gawne himself felt a call to rise and go out after the others. 

All this time the bishop sat motionless in the chancel, his 
head down, his face rather paler than usual, his whole figure 
somewhat weak and languid, as if continued suffering in 
silence and in secret bad at length taken the power of life out 
of him. Presently the bell stopped suddenly, and almost in- 
stantly little Jabez, with a face as sharp as a pen, came back 


186 


THE DEEMSTER. 


to his pew, and Mr. Quirk also returned to his place, shaking 
his head meantime with portentous gravity. A moment later 
Will-as-Thorn appeared inside the communion rail, having 
put on his coat and whipped the lash comb through his hair, 
which now hung like a dozen of wet dip candles down his 
forehead straight for his eyes. 

The dull buzz of gossip ceased, all was dead silence in the 
chapel, and many necks were craned forward as Will-as-Thorn 
was seen to go up to the bishop and speak to him. Listening 
without much apparent concern the bishop nodded his head 
once or twice, then rose immediately and walked to the read- 
ing-desk. Almost at the same moment Will-as-Thorn took 
his seat over the clock in the little west gallery, and straight- 
way the service began. 

The choir sung the psalm which they had practiced at the 
parish church the evening before — “ It is good for me that 1 
have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.” For 
the first of his lessons the bishop read the story of Eli and of 
Samuel, and of the taking by the Philistines of the ark of the 
covenant of God. His voice was deep and measured, and 
when he came to read of the death of Eli’s sons, and of how 
the bad news was brought to Eli, his voice softened and all 
but broke. 

“ And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and 
came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent, and with 
earth upon his head. 

“ And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside 
watching; for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And 
when the man came into the city, and told it, all the city 
cried out. 

“ And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, 
* What meaneth the noise of this tumult?’ And the man 
came in hastily and told Eli. 

“Now Eli was ninety and eight years old, and his eyes were 
dim that he could not see. 

“ And the man said unto Eli, ‘lam he that came out of 
the army, and 1 fled to-day out of The army.’ And he said, 
‘ What is there done, my son?’ ” 

The bishop preached but rarely now, and partly for the 
reverence they always owed the good man, and partly for the 
reason that they did not often hear him, the people composed 
themselves to a mood of sympathy as he ascended the pulpit 
that Christmas morning. It was a beautiful sermon that he 
gave them, and it was spoken without premeditation, and was 
loose enough in its structure. But it was full of thought that 


THE DEEMSTER. 


18 ? 


seemed to be too simple to be deep, and of emotion that was 
too deep to be anything but simple. It touched on the life of 
Christ, from His birth in Bethlehem to His coming as a boy 
to the temple where the doctors sat, and so on to the agony in 
the garden. And then it glanced aside, as touchingly as 
irrelevantly, at the story of Eli and his sons, and the judg- 
ment of God on Israel's prophet. In that beautiful digression 
the bishop warned all parents that it was their duty before 
God to bring up their children in God's fear, or theirs would 
be the sorrow, and their children's the suffering and the shame 
everlasting. And then in a voice that could barely support 
itself he made an allusion that none could mistake. 

“ Strange it is, and very pitiful," he said, 44 that what we 
think in our weakness to be the holiest of our human affec- 
tions may be a snare and a stumbling-block. Strange enough, 
surely, and very sad, that even as the hardest of soul among 
us all *may be free from blame where his children stand for 
judgment, so the tenderest of heart may, like Eli of old, be 
swept from the face of the living God for the iniquity of his 
children, which he has not restrained. But the best of our 
earthly passions, or what seem to be the best, the love of the 
mother for the babe at her breast, the pride of the father in 
the son that is flesh of his flesh, must be indulged with sin if 
it is not accepted with grace. True, too true, that there are 
those of us who may cast no stone, who should offer no 
counsel. Like Eli we know that the word of God has gone 
out against us, and we can but bend our foreheads and say, 
* It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good.' " 

When the sermon ended there was much needless industry 
in searching for books under the book-rail, much furtive 
wiping of the eyes, much demonstrative blowing of the nose, 
and in the midst of the benediction a good deal of subdued 
whispering. 

44 Aw, 'deed, the ould bishop bates the young pazon him- 
self at putting out the talk — studdier like, and not so fiery 
may be; but, man alive, the tender he is!" 

44 And d'ye mind that taste about Eli and the two idiot 
waistrels Hoffnee and Fin-e-ass?" 

44 And did ye observe the ould man trembling morthal?" 

44 Och, yes, and I'll go bail it wasn't them two blackyards 
he was thinking of, at all at all." 

When the service came to an end, and the congregation was 
breaking up, and Billy the Gawk was hobbling down the aisle 
on a pair of sticks, that hoary old sinner, turned saint because 
fallen sick, was muttering something about 44 a rael good ould 


188 


THE DEEMSTER. 


father/’ and 44 dirts like than Dan/’ and 44 a thund’rin’ rascal 
with all.” 

A strange scene came next. The last of the congregation 
had not yet reached the porch, when all at once there was an 
uneasy move among them like the ground-swell among the 
shoalings before the storm comes to shore. Those who were 
in front fell back or turned about and nodded as if they wished 
to say something; and those who were behind seemed to think 
and wonder. Then, sudden as the sharp crack of the first 
breaker on a reef, the faces of the people fell to a great heavi- 
ness of horror, and the air was full of mournful exclamations, 
surprise, and terror. 

“ Lord ha’ massy!” 

44 Dead, you say?” 

44 Aw, dead enough.” 

4 4 Washed ashore by the Mooragh?” 

44 So they’re sayin’, so they’re sayin’.” 

“ Hiain Jean myghin orrin — Lord have mercy upon us!” 

Half a minute later the whole congregation were gathered 
outside the west porch. There, in the recess between the 
chapel and the house, two men, fisher-fellows of Michael, stood 
surrounded by a throng of people. Something lay at their 
feet, and the crowd made a circle about it, looked down at it, 
and. drew long breaths. And when one after another came 
up, reached over the heads of others, and saw what lay within, 
he turned away with uplifted hands and a face that was white 
with fear. 

44 Lord ha’ massy! Lord ha’ massy!” cried the people on 
every side, and their senses were confused and overpowered. 

Wbat the dread thing was that lay at the feet of the two 
fishermen does not need to be said. 

44 At the Mooragh, d’ye say — came ashore at the Mooragh?” 

44 Ay, at the top of the flood.” 

44 God bless me!” 

44 1 saw it an hour before it drifted in,” said one of the two 
grave fellows. “ I was down longshore shrimping, and it was 
a good piece out to sea, and a heavy tide running. 4 Lord 
ha’ massy, what’s that?’ I says. 4 It’s a gig with a sail/ 1 
was thinking, but no, it was looking too small. It’s a diver, 
or may be a solan goose with its wings stretched out; but no, 
it was looking too big.” 

44 Bless me! Lord bless me!” 

“ And when it came a piece nearer it was into the sea I was 
going, breast high and more, and I came anigh it, and saw 
what it was — and frightened mortal, you go bail — and away to 


THE DEEMSTER. 


189 


the street for Jemmy here, and back middlin' sharp, and it 
driftin' and driftin' on the beach by that time, and the water 
flopping on it, and the two of us up with it on to our shoul- 
ders, and straight away for the Coort." 

And sure enough the fisherman's clothes were drenched 
above his middle, and the shoulders of both men were wet. 

“ Bless me! bless me! Lord ha' massy!" echoed one, and 
then another, and once again they craned their necks forward 
and looked down. 

The loose canvas that had been ripped open by the weights 
was lying where the seams were stretched, and none uncovered 
the face, for the sense of human death was strong on all. But 
word had gone about whose body it was, and blind Kerry, 
wringing her hands and muttering something about the sights, 
pushed her way to the side of the two men, and asked why 
they had brought their burden to Bishop's Court instead of 
taking it to Ballamona. 

“ Aw, well," they answered, “ we were thinking the bishop 
was his true father, and Bishop's Coort his true home for all. " 

“ And that's true, too," said Kerry, “ for his own father 
has been worse than a hay then naygro to him, and lave it to 
me to know, for didn't I bring the millish into the world?" 

Then there came a rush of people down the road from the 
village. A rumor that something horrible had washed ashore 
had passed quickly from mouth to mouth, after the fisherman 
had run up to the village for help. And now in low, eager 
tones, questions and answers came and went among the crowd. 
“ Who is it?" “ Is it the captain?" “ What, Mastha Ban?" 
“That's what they're saying up the street any way." 
“ Wrapped in a hammock — good Lord preserve us!" “ Come 
up in the tideway at the Mooragh — gracious me! and I saw 
myself on'y yesterday. " 

The bishop was seen to come out of the vestry door, and at 
the sight of him the crowd seemed to awake out of its first 
stupor. “God help the bishop!" “Here he's coming." 
“ Bless me, he'll have to pass it by, going into the house. " 
“The shock will kill the ould man." “Poor thing, poor 
thing!" “ Some one must up, and break the bad newses to 
him. " “ Aw, yes, for sure." 

And then came the question of who was to tell the bishop. 
First, the people asked one Corlett Ballafayle. Corlett farmed 
a hundred acres, and was a church- warden, and a member of 
the Keys. But the big man said no, and edged away. Then 
they asked one of the Tubmans, but the brewer shook his 
head. He could not look into the bishop's face and tell him a 


190 


THE DEEMSTER. 


tale like that. At length they thought of blind Kerry. She 
at least would not see the face of the stricken man when she 
took him the fearful news. 

44 Aw, yes, Kerry, woman, it’s yourself for it, and a rael 
stout heart at you, and blind for all, thank the Lord.-” 

44 I'll try, please God,” said Kerry, and with that she moved 
slowly toward the vestry door, where the bishop had stopped 
to stroke the yellow curls of a little shy boy, and to ask him 
his age next birthday, and to wish him a merry Christmas and 
eighty more of them, and all merry ones. It was observed 
that the good man’s face was brighter now than it had been 
when he went into the chapel. 

The people watched Kerry as she moved up to the bishop. 
Could she be telling him? He was smiling! Was it not his 
laugh that they heard? Kerry was standing before him in an 
irresolute way, and now with a wave of the hand he was leav- 
ing her. He was coming forward. No, he had stopped again 
to speak to old Auntie Nan from the curragh, and Kerry had 
passed him in returning to the crowd. 

44 1 couldn’t do it; he spoke so cheerful, poor thing,” said 
Kerry; 44 and when I was going to speak he looked the spitten 
picture of my ould father.” 

The bishop parted from the old woman of the curragh, and 
then on raising his eyes he became conscious of the throng by 
the porch. 

44 Lave it to me,” said a rough voice, and Billy the Gawk 
stepped out. The crowd fell aside, and the fishermen placed 
themselves in front of the dread thing on the ground. Smil- 
ing and bowing on the right and left the bishop was passing 
on toward the door that led to the house when the old beggar 
of the highways hobbled in front of him. 

44 We’re right sorry, sir, my lord, to bring ye bad newses,” 
the old man stammered, lifting the torn cap from his head. 

The bishop’s face fell to a sudden gravity. 44 What is it?” 
he said, and his voice sunk. 

44 We’re rael sorry, and we know your heart was gripped to 
him with grapplins.” 

4k Ay, ay,” said some in the crowd. 

44 What is it, man? Speak,” said the bishop, and all 
around was silence and awe. 

The old man stood irresolute for a moment. Then, just as 
he was lifting his head to speak, and every eye was on the two 
who stood in the midst, the bishop and the old beggar, there 
came a loud noise from near at hand, and voices that sounded 
hoarse and jarring were in the air. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


191 


“ Where is it? When did they bring it up? Why is it not 
taken into the house?” 

It was the Deemster, and he came on with great flashing 
eyes, and behind him was Jarvis Kerruish. In an instant the 
crowd had fallen aside for him, and he had pushed through 
and come to a stand in front of the bishop. 

“ We know what has happened. We have heard it in the 
village,” he said. 44 I knew what it must come to sooner or 
later. 1 told you a hundred times, and you have only yourself 
to thank for it. '' 

The bishop said not a word. He saw what lay behind the 
feet of the fishermen, and stepped up to it. 

44 It's of your own doing,” shouted the Deemster in a voice 
of no ruth or pity. 44 You would not heed my warning. It 
was easy to see that the deviTs own dues were in him. He 
hadn't an ounce of grace in his carcass. He put his foot on 
your neck, and threatened to do as much for me some day. 
And see where he is now! Look at him! This is how your 
son comes home to you!” 

As he spoke, the Deemster pointed contemptuously with the 
handle of his walking-cane to the thing that lay between them. 

Then the hard tension of the people's silence was broken; 
they began to mutter among themselves and to propose and 
demur to something. They saw the Deemster's awful error, 
and that he thought the dead man was Dan. 

The bishop still stood immovable, with not the sign of a 
tear on his white face, but over it the skin was drawn hard. 

44 And let me tell you one thing more,” said the Deemster. 
44 Whoever he may be that brought matters to this pass, he 
shall not suffer. 1 will not lift a finger against him. The 
man who brings about his own death shall have the burden of 
it on his own head. The law will uphold me. ” 

Then a hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the peo- 
ple who stood around, and one man, a burly fellow, nerved by 
the Deemster's error, pushed forward and said: 

4 4 Deemster, be merciful, as you hope for mercy; you don't 
know what you're saying.” 

At that the Deemster turned about hotly and brought down 
his walking-cane with a heavy blow on the man's bieast. 

The stalwart fellow took the blow without lifting a hand. 
44 God help you, Deemster,” he said, in a thick voice, 44 God 
help you! you don't know what you're doing. Go and look at 
it. Deemster. Go and look, if you've the heart for it. Look 
at it, man, and may the Lord have mercy on you, and on us 


192 


THE DEEMSTER. 


all in our day of trouble, and may God forgive you the cruel 
words you've spoken to your own brother this day!" 

There was then a great silence for a moment. The Deem- 
ster gazed in a sort of stupor into the man's face, and his stick 
dropped out of his hand. With a look of majesty and of suf- 
fering the bishop stood at one side of the body, quiet, silent, 
giving no sign, seeing nothing but the thing at his feet, and 
hardly hearing the reproaches that were being hurled at him 
in the face of his people. The beating of his heart fell low. 

There was a moment of suspense, and then, breathing rapid, 
audible breath, the Deemster stooped beside the body, stretched 
out a half-palsied hand and drew aside the loose canvas, and 
saw the face of his own son Ewan. 

One long exclamation of surprise and consternation broke 
from the Deemster, and after that there came another fearful 
pause, wherein the bishop went down on his knees beside the 
body. In an instant the Deemster fell back to his savage 
mood. He rose to his full height; his face became suddenly and 
awfully discolored and stern, and, tottering almost to falling, 
he lifted his clinched fist to the sky in silent imprecation of 
heaven. 

The people dropped aside in horror, and their flesh crawled 
over them. “ Lord ha' massy!" they cried again, and Kerry, 
who was blind and could not see the Deemster, covered her 
ears that she might not hear him. 

And from where he knelt the bishop, who had not spoken 
until now, said, with an awful emphasis, “ Brother, the Lord 
of heaven looks down on us. " 

But the Deemster, recovering himself, laughed in scorn of 
his own weakness no less than of the bishop's reproof. He 
picked up the walking-cane that he had dropped, slapped his 
leg with it, ordered the two fishermen to shoulder their bur- 
den again and take it to Ballamona, and sent straightway for 
the coroner and the joiner, “ For," said he, “ my son having 
come out of the sea must be buried this same day." 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

HOW THE NEWS CAME TO THE BISHOP. 

The Deemster swung aside and went off, followed by Jarvis 
Kerruish. Then the two fishermen took up their dread bur- 
den and set their faces toward Ballamona. In a blind agony 
of uncertainty the bishop went into his house. His mind was 
confused; he sat and did his best to compose himself. The 
thing that had happened perplexed him cruelly. He tried to 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


193 


think it out, but found it impossible to analyze his unlinked 
ideas. His faculties were benumbed, and not even pain, the 
pain of Ewan's loss, could yet penetrate the dead blank that 
lay between him and a full consciousness of the awful event. 
He shed no tears, and not a sigh broke from him. Silent he 
sat, with an expression of suffering that might have been frozen 
in his stony eyes and on his whitening lips, so rigid was it, and 
as if the power of life had ebbed away like the last ebb of an 
exhausted tide. 

Then the people from without began to crowd in upon him 
where he sat in his library. They were in a state of great ex- 
citement, and all reserve and ceremony were broken down. 
Each had his tale to tell, each his conjecture to offer. One 
told what the longshore shrimper had said of finding the body 
near the fishing-ground known as the Mooragh. Another had 
his opinion as to how the body had sailed ashore instead of 
sinking. A third fumbled his cap, and said, “ 1 take sorrow 
to see you in such trouble, my lord, and wouldn't bring bad 
newses if I could give myself lave to bring good newses in- 
stead, but I'll go bail there's been bad work goin', and foul 
play as they're sayin', and I wouldn't trust but Mastha Dan 
— I'm saying I wouldn't trust but Mastha Dan could tell us 
something — " 

The bishop cut short the man’s garrulity with a slight gest- 
ure, and one by one the people went out. He had listened to 
them in silence and with a face of saintly suffering, scarcely 
hearing what they had said. “ I will await events," he 
thought, “and trust in God." But a great fear was laying 
hold of him, and he had to gird up his heart to conquer it. 
“ I will trust in God," he told himself a score of times, and 
in his faith in the goodness of his God he tried to be calm and 
brave. But one after another his people came back and back 
and back with new and still newer facts. At every fresh blow 
from damning circumstances his thin lips trembled, his nerv- 
ous fingers ran through his flowing white hair, and his deep 
eyes filled without moving. 

And after the first tempest of his own sorrow for the loss of 
Ewan, he thought of Dan, and of Dan's sure griei He re- 
membered the love of Ewan for Dan, and the love of Dan for 
Ewan. He recalled many instances of that beautiful affection, 
and in the quickening flow of the light of that love half the 
follies of his wayward son sunk out of sight. Dan must be 
told what had occurred, and if none had told him already, it 
was best that it should be broken to him from lips that loved 
him. 


7 


194 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Thus it was that this brave and long-harassed man, trying 
to think ill of his own harshness, that looked so impotent and 
so childish now, remembering no longer his vow never to set 
eyes on thp face of his son, or hold speech with him again, 
sent a messenger to the old Ballamona to ask for Dan, aud to 
bring him to Bishop’s Court without delay. 

Half an hour later, at the sound of a knock at his door, the 
bishop, thinking it was Dan himself, stood up to his stately 
height, and tried to hide his agitation, and answered in an un- 
steady voice, that not all the resolution of his brave heart could 
subdue to calmness. But it was the messenger, and not Dan, 
and he had returned to say that Mastha Dan had not been 
home since yesterday, and that when Mastha Ewan was last 
seen at home he had asked for Mastha Dan, and, not finding 
him, had gone down to the Lockjaw Creek to seek him. 

“ When was that?” the bishop asked. 

“ The ould body at the house said it might be a piece after 
three o’clock yesterday evening,” said the man. 

Beneath the cold quietness of the regard with which the 
bishop dismissed his messenger, a keener eye than his might 
have noted a fearful tumult. The bishop’s hand grew cold 
and trembled. At the next instant he had become conscious 
of his agitation, and had begun to reproach himself for his 
want of faith. “I will trust in God and await events,” he 
told himself again. “ No, I will not speak; 1 will maintain 
silence. Yes, I will await the turn of events, and trust in the 
good Father of all.” 

Then there came another knock at his door. “ Surely it is 
Dan at length; his old housekeeper has sent him on,” he 
thought. “ Come in,” he called, in a voice that shook. 

It was Hommy-beg. The Deemster had sent him across 
with a message. 

“ And what is it?” the bishop asked, speaking at the deaf 
man’s ear. 

Hommy-beg scratched his tousled head and made no answer 
at first, and the bishop repeated the question. 

“ We’re all taking sorrow for you, my lord,” said Hominy, 
and then he stopped. 

“ What is it?” the bishop repeated. 

<£ And right sorry I am to bring his message.” 

The bishop’s paie face took an ashy gray, but his manner 
was still calm. 

“ What did the Deemster send you to say, Hommy?” 

“ The Dempster — bad sess to him, and no disrespec’ — he 
sent me to tell you that they’re after stripping the canvas off. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


195 


and, behould ye, it’s an onld sail, and they’re knowing it by 
its number, and what fishing-boat it came out of, and all to 
that.” 

“ Where did the sail-cloth come from?” asked the bishop, 
and his deep eyes were fixed on Hommy. 

“ It’s an ould — well, the fact is — to tell you not a word of 
a lie — aw, my lord, what matter — what if it "is — ” 

“ Where?” said the bishop, calmly, though his lips whitened 
and quivered. 

“ It’s an old drift yawl-sail of the * Ben-my-Chree. ’ Aw, 
yes, yes, sarten sure, and sorry I am to bring bad newses.” 

Hommy-beg went out, and the bishop stood for some min- 
utes in the thrall of fear. He had been smitten hard by other 
facts, but this latest fact seemed for the moment to overthrow 
his great calm faith in God’s power to bring out all things for 
the best. He wrestled with it long and hard. He tried to 
persuade himself that it meant nothing. That Ewan was dead 
was certain. That he came by his death through foul play 
seemed no less sure and terrible. But that his body had been 
wrapped in sail-cloth once belonging to Dan’s fishing-boat was 
no sufficient ground for the terrible accusation that was taking 
shape in other minds. Could he accept the idea? Ah, no, 
no, no. To do so would be to fly in the face of all sound rea- 
son, all fatherly love, and all trust in the good Father above. 
Though the sail-cloth came from the “ Ben-my-Chree,” the 
fact said nothing of where the body came from. And even 
though it were certain that the body must have been dropped 
into the sea from the fishing-boat that belonged to Dan, it 
would still require proof that Dan himself was aboard of her. 

With such poor shifts the bishop bore down the cruel facts 
as one after one they beat upon his brain. He tried to feel 
shame of his own shame, and to think hard of his own hard 
thoughts. “ Yes, I will trust in God,” he told himself afresh, 
“I will await events, and trust in the good Father of all 
mercies.” But where was Dan? The bishop had made up 
his mind to send messengers to skirr the island round in search 
of his son, when suddenly there came a great noise as of many 
persons talking eagerly and drawing hurriedly near and 
nearer. 

A minute afterward his library door was opened again with- 
out reserve or ceremony, and there came trooping into the 
room a mixed throng of the village folk. Little Jabez Gawne 
was at their head with a coat and a hat held in his hands be- 
fore him. 

Cold as the day was the people looked hot and full of puz* 


196 


THE DEEMSTER. 


zled eagerness, and their smoking breath came in long jets 
into the quiet room. 

“ My lord, look what we've found on the top of Orrisdel," 
said Jabez, and he stretched out the coat, while one of the men 
behind him relieved him of the beaver. 

The coat was a long black cloth coat, with lappets and tails 
and wristbands turned over. 

The bishop saw at a glance that it was the coat of a clergy- 
man. 

44 Leave it to me to know this coat, my lord, for it was my- 
self that made it," said Jabez. 

The bishop’s brain turned giddy, and the perspiration 
started from his temples, but his dignity and his largeness did 
not desert him. 

44 Is it my poor Ewan’s coat?" he asked, as he held out his 
hand to take it, but his tone was one of almost hopeless misery 
and not of inquiry. 

“ That’s true, my lord," said Jabez, and thereupon the lit- 
tle tailor started an elaborate series of identifications, based 
chiefly on points of superior cut and workmanship. But the 
bishop cut the tailor short with a wave of the hand. 

44 You found it on Orrisdale Head?" asked the bishop. 

And one of the men behind pushed his head between the 
shoulders of those who were before him and said: 

44 Aw, yes, my lord, not twenty yards from the cliff, and I 
found something else beside of it." 

Just then there was a further noise in the passage outside 
the library, and a voice saying: 

44 Ger out of the way, you old loblolly boys, bringing bad 
newses still, and glad of them, too. ’’ 

It was Hommy-beg returned to Bishop’s Court with yet an- 
other message, but it was a message of his own and not of the 
Deemster’s. He pushed his way through the throng until he 
came face to face with the bishop, and then he said : 

44 The Dempster is afther having the doctor down from 
Ramsey, and the big man is sayin’ the neck was broken, and 
it was a fall that killed the young pazon, and nothing worse, at 
all at all." 

The large, sad eyes of the bishop seemed to shine without 
moving as Hommy spoke, but in an instant the man who had 
spoken before thrust his word in again, and then the bishop’s 
face grew darker than ever with settled gloom. 

44 It was myself that found the coat and hat, my lord; and 
a piece nearer the cliff I found this, and this; and then, down 
the brew itself — may be a matter of ten feet down-— 1 saw this 


THE DEEMSTEE. 19 ? 

other one sticking in a green corry of grass and ling, and over 
1 went, hand under hand, and brought it up. ” 

While he spoke the man struggled to the front, and held out 
in one hand a belt, or what seemed to be two belts buckled to- 
gether and cut across as with a knife, and in the other hand 
two daggers. 

A great awe fell upon every one at sight of the weapons. 
The bishop’s face still showed a quiet grandeur, but his breath- 
ing was labored and harassed. 

“Give them to me,” he said, with an impressive calmness, 
and the man put the belts and daggers into the bishop’s hands. 
He looked at them attentively, and saw that one of the buckles 
was of silver, while the other was of steel. 

“ Has any one recognized them?” he asked. 

A dozen voices answered at once that they were the belts of 
the newly banded militia. 

At the same instant the bishop’s eye was arrested by some 
scratches on the back of the silver buckle. He fixed his spec- 
tacles to examine the marks more closely. When he had done 
so he breathed with gasps of agony, and all the cheer of life 
seemed in one instant to die out of his face. His nerveless 
fingers dropped the belts and daggers on to the table, and the 
silver and the steel clinked as they fell. 

There had been a dead silence in the room for some mo- 
ments, and then with a labored tranquillity the bishop said, 
“ That will do;” and stood mute and motionless while the 
people shambled out, leaving their dread treasures behind 
them. 

To his heart’s core the bishop was struck with an icy chill. 
He tried to link together the terrible ideas that had smitten 
his brain, but his mind wandered and slipped away. Ewan 
was last seen going toward the creek; he was dead; he had 
been killed by a fall; his body had come ashore in an old sail 
of the “ Ben-iny-Chree;” his coat and hat had been picked 
up on the top of Orrisdale Head, and beside them lay two 
weapons and two belts, whereof one had belonged to Dan, 
whose name was scratched upon it. 

In the crushing coil of circumstance that was every moment 
tightening about him the bishop’s great calm faith in the good- 
ness of his Maker seemed to be benumbed. “ Oh, my son. 
my son!” he cried, when he was left alone. “ Would to God 
I had died before 1 saw this day! Oh, my son, my son!” 
But after a time he regained his self-control, and said to him- 
self again, “ I will trust in God; He will make the dark places 
plain.” Then he broke into short, fitful prayers, as if to drive 


198 


THE DEEMSTER. 


away by the warmth of the spirit the chill that was waiting in 
readiness to freeze his faith — “ Make haste unto me, oh, God! 
Hide not Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble.” 

The short winter’s day had dragged on heavily, but the arms 
of darkness were now closing round it. The bishop put on 
his cloak and hat and set off for Ballamona. In length of 
days he was but little past his prime, but the dark sorrow of 
many years had drained his best strength, and he tottered on 
the way. Only his strong faith that God would remember His 
servant in the hour of trouble gave power to his trembling 
limbs. 

And as he walked he began to reproach himself for the mis- 
trust whereby he had been so sorely shaken. This comforted 
him somewhat, and he stepped out more boldly. He was tell- 
ing himself that, perplexing though the facts might be, they 
were yet so inconclusive as to prove nothing except that Ewan 
was dead, when all at once he became conscious that in the 
road ahead of him, grouped about the gate of Ballamona, were 
a company of women and children, all agitated and some weep- 
ing, with the coroner in their midst questioning them. 

The coroner was Quayle the Gyke, the same who would have 
been left penniless by his father but for the bishop’s interven- 
tion. 

“ And when did your husband go out to sea?” the coroner 
asked. 

“ At flood-tide yesterday,” answered one of the women; 
44 and my man, he said to me, 4 Liza,’ he said, 4 get me a bite 
of priddhas and salt herrin’s for supper,’ he said; 4 we’ll be 
back for twelve,’ he said; but never a sight of him yet, and 
me up all night till daylight. ” 

“But they’ve been in and gone out to sea again,” said an- 
other of the women. 

44 How d’ye know that. Mother Quilleash?” asked the 
coroner. 

44 Because I’ve been taking a slieu round to the creek, and 
there’s a basket of ray and cod in the shed,” the woman an- 
swered. 

At that the bishop drew up at the gate, and the coroner ex- 
plained to him the trouble of the women and children. 

44 Is it you, Mrs. Corkell?” the bishop asked of a woman 
near him. 

44 Aw, yes, my lord.” 

44 And you, too, Mrs. Teare?” 

The woman courtesied; the bishop named them one by one, 


THE DEEMSTER. 199 

and stroked the bare head of the little girl who was clinging 
to her mother’s cloak and weeping. 

“ Then it’s the k Ben-my-Chree ’ that has been missing since 
yesterday at high water?” the bishop said, in a sort of hushed 
whisper. 

“ Yes, sure, my lord.” 

At that the bishop turned suddenly aside, without a word 
more, opened the gate, and walked up the path. “ Oh, my 
son, my son!” he cried, in his bleeding heart, “how have 
you shortened my days! How have you clothed me with 
shame! Oh, my son, my son!” 

Before Ballamona an open cart was standing, with the tail- 
board down, and the horse was pawing the gravel which had 
once — on a far different occasion — been strewn with the 
“ blithe-bread. ” The door of the house stood ajar, and a jet 
of light from within fell on the restless horse without. The 
bishop entered the house, and found all in readiness for the 
hurried night burial. On chairs that were ranged back to 
back a rough oak coffin, like an oblong box, was resting, and 
from the rafter of the ceiling immediately over it a small oil- 
lamp was suspended. On either side of the hall were three or 
four men holding brands and leathern lanterns, ready for light- 
ing. The Deemster was coming and going from his own 
room beyond, attended in bustling eagerness by Jarvis Ker- 
ruish. Near the coffin stood the vicar of the parish, father of 
the dead man’s dead wife, and in the opening of a door that 
went out from the hall Mona stood weeping, with the dead 
man’s child in her arms. 

And even as it is only in the night that the brightest stars 
may truly be seen, so in the night of all this calamity the star 
of the bishop’s faith shone out clearly again, and his vague 
misgivings fell away. He stepped up to Mona, whose dim 
eyes were now fixed on his face in sadness of sympathy, and 
with his dry lips he touched her forehead. 

Then, in the depth of his own sorrow and the breadth of 
shadow that lay upon him, he looked down at the little one in 
Mona’s arms, where it leaped and cooed and beat its arms on 
the air in a strange wild joy at this gay spectacle of its father’s 
funeral, and his eyes filled for what the course of its life 
would be. 

Almost as soon as the Deemster was conscious of the bish- 
op’s presence in the house he called on the mourners to make 
ready, and then six men stepped to the side of the coffin. 

“ Thorkell,” said the bishop, calmly, and the bearers paused 


200 


THE DEEMSTER. 


while he spoke, “ this haste to put away the body of our dear 
Ewan is unseemly, because it is unnecessary.” 

The Deemster made no other answer than a spluttered ex- 
pression of contempt, and the bishop spoke again. 

“You are aware that there is no canon of the Church re- 
quiring it, and no law of State demanding it. That a body 
from the sea shall be buried within the day it has washed ashore 
is no more than a custom. ” 

“ Then custom shall be indulged with custom/’ said Thor- 
kell, decisively. 

“ Not for fifty years has it been observed,” continued the 
bishop; “ and here is an outrage on reason and on the respect 
we owe to our dead . 99 

At this the Deemster said: “ The body is mine, and I will 
do as I please with it. ” 

Even the six carriers, with their hands on the coffin, caught 
their breath at these words; but the bishop answered without 
anger: “ And the grave-yard is mine, in charge for the Church 
and God’s people, and if I do not forbid the burial, it is be- 
cause I would have no wrangling over the grave of my boy.” 

The Deemster spat on the floor, and called on the carriers 
to take up their burden. Then the six men lifted the coffin 
from the chairs, and put it into the car at the door. The 
other mourners went out on to the gravel, and such of them 
as carried torches and lanterns lighted them there. The 
“ Old Hundredth 99 was then sung, and when its last notes 
had died on the night-air the springless cart went jolting down 
the path. Behind it the mourners ranged themselves two 
abreast, with the Deemster walking alone after the cart, and 
the bishop last of all. 

Mona stood a moment at the open door in the hall that was 
now empty and desolate and silent, save for the babblings of 
the child in her arms. She saw the procession pass through 
the gate into the road. After that she went into the house, 
drew aside the curtain of her window, and watched the mov- 
ing lights until they stopped, and then she knew that they 
were gathered about an open grave, and that half of all that 
had been very dear to her in this weary world was gone from 
it forever. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE CHILD-GHOST IH THE HOUSE. 

After the coroner, Quayle the Gyke, had gone through one 
part of his dual functions at Ballamona, and thereby discov- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


201 


ered that the body of Ewan had been wrapped in a sail-cloth 
of the “ Ben-my-Chree,'' he set out on the other part of his 
duty, to find the berth of the fishing-boat, and, if need be, to 
arrest the crew. He was in the act of leaving Ballamona 
when, at the gate of the high-road, he came upon the women 
and children of the families of the crew he was in search of, 
and there, at the moment when the , bishop arrived for the 
funeral, he heard that the men had been at sea since the mid- 
dle of the previous day. Confirmed in his suspicions, but con- 
cealing them, he returned to the village with the terrified 
women, and on the way he made his own sinister efforts to 
comfort them when they mourned as if their husbands had 
been lost. “ Aw, no, no, no, never fear; we'll see them again 
soon enough. I'll go bail,” he said, and in their guileless 
blindness the women were nothing loath to take cheer from 
the fellow's dubious smile. 

His confidence was not misplaced, for hardly had he got 
back to the village, and stepped into the houses one after one, 
making his own covert investigations while he sandwiched his 
shrewd questions with solace, when the fishermen themselves, 
old Quilleash, Crennel, Teare, and Corkell, and the lad Davy 
Fayle, came tramping up the street. Then there was wild joy 
among the children, who clung to the men's legs, and some 
sharp nagging among the women, who were by wifely duty 
bound to conceal their satisfaction under a proper appearance 
of wrath. “And what for had they been away all night?” 
and “ Didn't they take shame at treating a woman like dirt?” 
and “Just like a man, just, not earing a ha'p’orth, and a 
woman up all night, and taking notions about drowning, and 
more fool for it.” 

And when at length there came a cessation of such ques- 
tions, and the fishermen sat down with an awkward silence, or 
grunted something in an evasive way about “ Women preach- 
ing mortal,” and “ Never no reason in them,” then the coro- 
ner began his more searching inquiries. When did they run in 
with the cod and ling that was found lying in the tent? Was 
there a real good “strike” on that they went out again 
at half-flood last night? Doing much outside? No? He 
wouldn't trust but they were lying off the Mooragh, eh? Yes, 
you say? Coorse, coorse. And good ground, too. And where 
was the capt'n? Out with them? He thought so. 

Everything the coroner asked save the one thing on which 
his mind was set, but at mention of the Mooragh the women 
lorgot their own trouble in the greater trouble that was over 
die parish, and blurted out with many an expletive the story 


202 


THE DEEMSTER. 


of the coming to shore of the body of Ewan. And hadn’t 
they heard the jeel? Aw, shocking, shocking! And the 
young pazon had sailed in their boat, so he had! Aw, ter’ble, 
ter’ble ! 

The coroner kept his eyes fixed on the men’s faces, and 
marked their confusion with content. They on their part 
tried all their powers of dissembling. First came a fine show 
of ferocity. Where were their priddhas and herrings? Bad 
sess to the women, the idle shoulderin’ craythurs, did they 
think a man didn’t want never a taste of nothin’ cornin’ in 
olf the say, afther workin’ for them day and night same as 
hay then naygroes, and no thanks for it? 

It would not do, and the men themselves were the first to 
be conscious that they could not strike fire. One after an- 
other slunk out of his house until they were all five on the 
street in a group, holding their heads together and muttering. 
And when at length the coroner came out of old Quilleash’s 
house, and leaned against the trammon at the porch, and 
looked toward them in the darkness, but said not a word, their 
self-possession left them on the instant, and straightway they 
took to their heels. 

“ Let’s away at a slant over the Head and give warning to 
Mastha Dan,” they whispered; and this was the excuse they 
made to themselves for their flight, just to preserve a little 
ray of self-respect. 

But the coroner understood them, and he set his face back 
toward the church-yard, knowing that the Deemster would be 
there by that time. 

The bishop had gone through the ceremony at the grave-side 
with composure, though his voice when he spoke was full of 
tears, and the hair of his uncovered head seemed to have passed 
from iron-gray to white. His grand, calm face was steadfast, 
and his prayer was of faith and hope. Only beneath this white 
quiet as of a glacier the red riot of a great sorrow was rife 
within him. 

It was then for the first time in its fullness that — undis- 
turbed in that solemn hour by coarser fears —he realized the 
depth of his grief for the loss of Ewan. That saintly soul 
came back to his memory in its beauty and tenderness alone, 
and its heat and uncontrollable unreason were forgotten. 
When he touched on the mystery of Ewan’s death his large 
wa n face quivered slightly and he paused; but when he spoke 
of the hope of an everlasting reunion, and how all that was 
dark would be made plain and tlie Judge of all the earth 


THE DEEMSTER. 


203 


would do right, his voice grew bold as with a surety of a brave 
resignation. 

The Deemster listened to the short night-service with alter- 
nate restlessness — tramping to and fro by the side of the grave 
— and cold self-possession, and with a constant hardness and 
bitterness of mind, breaking out sometimes into a light trill of 
laughter, or again into a hoarse gurgle, as if in scorn of the 
bishop's misplaced confidence. But the crowds that were 
gathered around held their breath in awe of the mystery, and 
when they sung it was with such an expression of emotion and 
fear that no man knew the sound of his own voice. 

More than once the Deemster stopped in his uneasy peram- 
bulations, and cried, “ What's that?" as if arrested by sounds 
that did not break on the ears of others. But nothing occurred 
to disturb the ceremony until it had reached the point of its 
close, and while the bishop was pronouncing a benediction the 
company was suddenly thrown into a great tumult. 

It was then that the coroner arrived, panting after a long 
run. He pushed his way through the crowd, and burst in at 
the grave-side between the bishop and the Deemster. 

“ They've come ashore," he said, eagerly; “ the boat's in 
harbor and the men are here." 

Twenty voices at once cried, “ Who?" but the Deemster 
asked no explanation. “ Take them," he said, “ arrest 
them;" and his voice was a bitter laugh and his face in the 
light of the torches was full of malice and uncharity. 

Jarvis Kerruish stepped out. “ Where are they?" he asked. 

“ They've run across the Head in the line of the Cross 
Vein," the coroner answered; “but six of us will follow 
them. " 

And without more ado he twisted about and impressed the 
five men nearest to him into service as constables. 

“ How many of them are there?" said Jarvis Kerruish. 

“ Five, sir," said the coroner, “ Quilleash, Teare, Corkell, 
Crennel, and the lad Davy." 

“ Then is he not with them?" cried the Deemster, in a tone 
that went to the bishop's heart like iron. 

The coroner glanced uneasily at the bishop, and said: “ He 
was with them, and he is still somewhere about." 

“ Then away with you; arrest them, quick," the Deemster 
cried, in another tone. 

“ But what of the warrant, sir?" said the coroner. 

“ Simpleton, are you waiting for that?" the Deemster 
shouted, with a contemptuous sweep of the hand. “ Where 
have you been, that you don't know that your own warrant is 


204 


THE DEEMSTER. 


enough? Arrest the scoundrels, and you shall have warrant 
enough when you come back. ” 

But as the six men were pushing their way through the 
people, and leaping the cobble wall of the church-yard, the 
Deemster picked from the ground a piece of slate-stone that 
had come up from the vault, and scraped his initials upon it 
with a pebble. 

“Take this token, and go after them,” he said to Jarvis 
Kerruish, and instantly Jarvis was following the coroner and 
his constables, with the Deemster's legal warranty for their 
proceedings. 

It was the work of a moment, and the crowd that had stood 
with drooping heads about the bishop had now broken up in con- 
fusion. The bishop himself had not spoken; a shade of bodily 
pain had passed over his pale face, and a cold damp had 
started from his forehead. But hardly had the coroner gone, 
or the people recovered from their bewilderment, when the 
bishop lifted one hand to bespeak silence, and then said, in a 
tone impossible to describe: “ Can any man say of his own 
knowledge that my son was on the ‘ Ben-my-Chree 9 last 
night?" 

The Deemster snorted contemptuously, but none made an- 
swer to the bishop's question. 

At that moment there came the sound of a horse's hoofs on 
the road, and immediately the old archdeacon drew up. He 
had been preaching the Christmas sermons at Peeltown that 
day, and there he had heard of the death of his grandson, and 
of the suspicions that were in the air concerning it. The dour 
spirit of the disappointed man had never gone out with too 
much warmth to the bishop, but had always been ready 
enough to cast contempt on the “ moonstruck ways '' of the 
man who had “ usurped " his own place of preferment; and 
now, without contrition or pity, he was ready to strike his 
blow at the stricken man. 

“ I hear that the 4 Ben-my-Chree ' has put into Peel 
Harbor," ho said, and as he spoke he leaned across his saddle- 
bow, with his russet face toward where the bishop stood. 

“ Well, well, well?" cried the Deemster, rapping out at the 
same time his oaths of impatience as fast as a hen might have 
pecked. 

“ And that the crew are not likely to show their faces 
soon," the archdeacon continued. 

“Then you're wrong," said the Deemster, imperiously, 
“ for they've done as much already. But what about their 


THE DEEMSTEK, 205 

owner? Was he with them? Have you seen him? Quick, 
let us hear what you have to say.” 

The archdeacon did not shift his gaze from the bishop’s 
face, but he answered the Deemster nevertheless. 

“ Their owner was with them,” he said, “ and woe be to 
him. I had as lief that a millstone were hung about my neck 
as that I stood before God as the father of that man. ” 

And with such charity of comfort the old archdeacon 
alighted and walked away with the Deemster at the horse’s 
head. The good man had praeched with unwonted fervor 
that day from the Scripture which says, “ With what measure 
ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. ” 

In another instant the bishop was no longer the same man. 
Conviction of Dan’s guilt had taken hold of him. Thus far 
he had borne up against all evil shown by the strength of his 
great faith in his Maker to bring out all things well. But at 
length that faith was shattered. When the Deemster and the 
archdeacon went away together, leaving him in the midst of 
the people, he stood there, while all eyes were upon him, with 
the stupid bewildered look of one who has been dealt an un- 
expected and dreadful blow. The world itself was crumbling 
under him. At that first instant there w T as something like a 
ghastly smile playing over his pale face. Then the truth came 
rolling over him. The sight was terrible to look upon. He 
tottered backward with a low moan. When his faith went 
down his manhood went down with it. 

“Oh, my son, my son!” he cried again, “how have you 
shortened my days! How have you clothed me with shame! 
Oh, my son, my son!” 

But love was uppermost even in that bitter hour, and the 
good God sent the stricken man the gift of tears. “ He is 
dead, he is dead!” he cried; “now is my heart smitten and 
withered like grass. Ewan is dead. My son is dead. Can it 
be true? Yes, dead, and worse than dead. Lord, Lord, now 
let me eat ashes for bread and mingle my drink with weep- 
ing.” 

And so he poured out his broken spirit in a torrent of wild 
laments. The disgrace that had bent his bead heretofore was 
but a dream to this deadly reality. “ Oh, my son, my son! 
Would God I had died before I saw this day!” 

The people stood by while the unassuageable grief shook 
the bishop to the soul. Then one of them — it was Thormod 
Mylechreest, the bastard son of the rich man who had left his 
offspring to public charity — took the old man by the hand, 
and the crowd parted for them. Together they passed out of 


206 


THE DEEMSTER. 


the church-yard, and out of the hard glare of the torch-light, 
and set off for Bishop's Court. It was a pitiful thing to see. 
How the old father, stricken into age by sorrow rather than 
years, tottered feebly on the way. How low his white head 
was bent, as if the darkness itself had eyes to peer into his 
darkened soul. 

And yet more pitiful was it to see how the old man's broken 
spirit, reft of its great bulwark, which lay beneath it like an 
idol that was broken, did yet struggle with a vain effort to 
glean comfort from its fallen faith. But every stray text that 
rose to his heart seemed to wound it afresh. “ As arrows in 
the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. . . . 
They shall not be ashamed. . . . Oh, Absalom, my son, my 
son! . . . For thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath 
covered my face. ... I am poor and needy; make haste unto 
me, oh God. . . . Hide not Thy face from Thy servant, for I 
am in trouble. . . . Oh, God, Thou knowest my foolishness. 

. . . And Eli said It is the Lord, let Him do as seemeth Him 
good. . . . The waters have overwhelmed me, the streams 
have gone over my soul; the proud waters have gone over my 
soul. " 

Thus tottering feebly at the side of Mylechreest and leaning 
on his arm, the bishop went his way, and thus the poor dead 
soul of the man, whose faith was gone, poured forth its barren 
grief. The way was long, but they reached Bishop's Court at 
last, and at sight of it a sudden change seemed to come over 
the bishop. He stopped and turned to Mylechreest, and said 
with a strange resignation : 

“ I will be quiet. Ewan is dead, and Dan is dead. Surely 
I shall quiet myself as a child that is weaned of its mother. 
Yes, my soul is even as a weaned child. " 

And, with the simple calmness of a little child, he held out 
his hand to Mylechreest to bid him farewell, and when Myle- 
chreest, with swimming eyes and a throat full for speech, bent 
over the old man's hand and put his lips to it, the bishop 
placed the other hand on his head, as if he had asked for a 
blessing, and blessed him. 

“ Good-night, my son," he said simply, but Mylechreest 
could answer nothing. 

The bishop was turning into bis house when the memory 
that had gone from him for one instant of blessed respite re- 
turned, and his sorrow bled afresh, and he cried piteously. 
The inanimate old place was in a moment full of specters. 
For that night Bishop's Court had gone back ten full years, 


THE DEEMSTER. 207 

and if it was not now musical with children’s voices, the spirit 
of one happy boy still lived in it. 

Passing his people in the hall and on the stairs, where, tor- 
tured by suspense, bewildered, distracted, they put their 
doubts and rumors together, the bishop went up to the little 
room above the library that had once been little Danny’s 
room. The door was locked, but the key was where it had 
been for many a day — though Dan in his headstrong wayward- 
ness had known nothing of that— it was in the bishop’s pocket. 
Inside the room the muggy odor was of a chamber long shut 
up. The little bed was still in the corner, and its quilted 
counterpane lay thick in dust. Dust covered the walls, and 
the floor also, and the table under the window was heavy with 
it. Shutting himself in this dusty crib, the bishop drew from 
under the bed a glass-covered case, and opened it, and lifted 
out one by one the things it contained. They were a child’s 
playthings — a whip, a glass marble, a whistle, an old Manx 
penny, a tomtit’s mossy nest with three speckled blue eggs in 
it, some pearly shells, and a bit of shriveled sea- weed. And 
each poor relic as it came up awoke a new memory and a new 
grief, and the fingers trembled that held them. The sense of 
a boy’s sport and a boy’s high spirits, long dumb and dead, 
touched the old man to the quick within these heavy walls. 

The bishop replaced the glass-covered case, locked the room, 
and went down to his library. But the child-ghost that lived 
in that gaunt old house did net keep to the crib upstairs. 
Into this book-clad room it followed the bishop, with blue eyes 
and laughter on the red lips; with a hop, skip, and a jump, 
and a pair of spectacles perched insecurely on the diminutive 
nose. 

Ten years had rolled back for the broken-hearted father 
that night, and Dan, who was lost to him in life, lived in his 
remembrance only as a beautiful, bright, happy, sprited, inno- 
cent child that could never grow older, but must be a child 
forever. 

The bishop could endure the old house no longer. It was 
too full of specters. He would go out and tramp the roads 
the long night through. Up and down, up and down, through 
snow or rain, under the moonlight or the stars until the day 
dawned, and the pitiless sun should rise again over the heed- 
less sleeping world. 


208 


THE DEEMSTER. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

BY BISHOP’S LAW OR DEEMSTER’S. 

The bishop had gone into the hall for his cloak and hat 
when he came face to face with the Deemster, who was enter- 
ing the house. At sight of his brother his bewildered mind 
made some feeble efforts to brace itself up. 

44 Ah, is it you, Thorkell? Then you have come at last! I 
had given you up. But I am going out to-night. Will you 
not come into the library with me? But perhaps you are go- 
ing somewhere?” 

It was a painful spectacle, the strong brain of the strong 
man tottering visibly. The Deemster set down his hat and 
cane, and looked up with a cold mute stare in answer to his 
brother’s inconsequent questions, Then, without speaking, 
he went into the library, and the bishop followed him with a 
feeble, irregular step, humming a lively tune — it was 44 Sally 
in Our Alley ’’—and smiling a melancholy, jaunty, bankrupt 
smile. 

4 4 Gilchrist,” said the Deemster, imperiously, and he closed 
the door behind them as he spoke, 4 4 let us put away all pre- 
tense, and talk like men. We have serious work before us, 1 
promise you.” 

By a perceptible spasm of will the bishop seemed to regain 
command of his faculties, and his countenance, that had been 
mellowed down to most pitiful weakness, grew on the instant 
firm and pale. 

44 What is it, Thorkell?” he said, in a more resolute tone. 

Then the Deemster asked deliberately: 44 What do you in- 
tend to do with the murderer of my son?” 

44 What do I mean to do? I? Do you ask me what I in- 
tend to do?” said the bishop, in a husky whisper. 

44 1 ask you what you intend to do,” said the Deemster, 
firmly. 44 Gilchrist, let us make no faces. You do not need 
that I should tell you what powers of jurisdiction over felonies 
are held by the bishop of this island as its spiritual baron. 
More than once you have reminded me, and none too courte- 
ously, of those same powers when they have served your turn. 
They are to-day what they were yesterday, and so I ask you 
again, What do you intend to do with the murderer of my 
son?” 

The bishop’s breath seemed suspended for a moment, and 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


209 


then, in broken accents he said softly: “ You ask me what I 
intend to do with the murderer of our Ewan — his murderer, 
you say?” 

In a cold and resolute tone the Deemster said again, “ His 
murderer,” and bowed stiffly. 

The bishop’s confusion seemed to overwhelm him. “ Is it 
not assuming too much, Thorkell?” he said, and while his 
fingers trembled as he unlaced them before him, the same sad 
smile as before passed across his face. 

“ Listen, and say whether it is so or not,” said the Deem- 
ster, with a manner of rigid impassibility. “ At three o’clock 
yesterday my son left me at my own house with the declared 
purpose of going in search of your son. With what object? 
Wait. At half past three he asked for your son at the house 
they shared together. He was then told that your son would 
be found at the village. Before four o’clock he inquired for 
him at the village pot-house, your son’s daily and nightly 
haunt. There he was told that the man he wanted had been 
seen going down toward the creek, the frequent anchorage of 
the fishing-smack the ‘ Ben-my-Chree,’ with which he has 
frittered away his time and your money. As the parish clock 
was striking four he was seen in the lane leading to the creek, 
walking briskly down to it. He was never seen again.” 

“My brother, my brother, what proof is there in that?” 
said the bishop, with a gesture of protestation. 

“ Listen. That creek under the Head of Orrisdale is 
known to the fisher-folk as the Lockjaw. Do you need to be 
told why? Because there is only one road out of it. My son 
went into the creek, but he never left it alive.” 

“ How is this known, Thorkell?” 

“ How? In this way. Almost immediately my son had 
gone from my house Jarvis Kerruish went after him, to over- 
take him and bring him back. Not knowing the course, 
Jarvis had to feel his way and inquire, but he came upon his 
trace at last, and followed Ewan on the road he had taken, 
and reached the creek soon after the parish clock struck five. 
Now, if my son had returned as he went, Jarvis Kerruish 
must have met him.” 

“ Patience, Thorkell, have patience,” said the bishop. “ If 
Ewan found Dan at the Lockjaw Creek, why did not the 
young man Jarvis find both of them there?” 

“ Why?” the Deemster echoed, “ because the one was dead, 
and the other in hiding.” 

The bishop was standing at that moment by the table, and 
one hand was touching something that lay upon it. A cry 


210 


THE DEEMSTER. 


that was half a sigh and half a suppressed scream of terror 
burst from him. The Deemster understood it not, but set it 
down to the searching power of his own words. Shuddering 
from head to foot the bishop looked down at the thing his 
hand had touched. It was the militia belt. He had left it 
where it had fallen from his fingers when the men brought it 
to him. Beside it, half hidden by many books and papers, 
the two small daggers lay. 

Then a little low cunning crept over the heart of that saintly 
man, and he glanced up into his brother's face with a dissem- 
bled look, not of inquiry, but of supplication. The Deem- 
ster's face was imperious, and his eyes betrayed no discovery. 
He had seen nothing. 

“ You make me shudder, Thorkell," the bishop murmured, 
and while he spoke he lifted the belt and daggers furtively 
amid a chaos of loose papers, and whipped them into the door 
of a cabinet that stood open. 

His duplicity had succeeded; not even the hollow ring of his 
voice had awakened suspicion, but he sat down with a crushed 
and abject mien. His manhood had gone, shame overwhelmed 
him, and he ceased to contend. 

“ I said there was only one way out of the creek," said the 
Deemster, “ but there are two. " 

“ Ah!" 

“ The other way is~by the sea. My son took that way, but 
he took it as a dead man, and when he came ashore he was 
wrapped for sea-burial— by ignorant bunglers who had never 
buried a body at sea before — in a sail-cloth of the * Ben-my- 
Chree.' " 

The bishop groaned, and wiped his forehead. 

“ Do you ask for further evidence?" said the Deemster in 
a relentless voice. “ If so, it is at hand. Where was the 
* Ben-my-Chree ' last night? It was on the sea. Last night 
was Christmas-eve, a night of twenty old Manx customs. 
Where were the boat's crew and owner? They were away 
from their homes. To-day was Christmas-day. Where were 
the men? Their wives and children were waiting for some of 
them to eat with them their Christmas dinner and drink their 
Christmas ale. But they were not in their houses, and no one 
knew where they were. Can circumstances be more damning? 
Speak, and say. Don't wring your hands; be a man and look 
me in the face. " 

“ Have mercy, Thorkell," the bishop murmured, utterly 
prostrate. But the Deemster went on to lash him as a brutal 
master whips a broken- winded horse. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


211 


6 4 When the * Ben-my-Chree , came into harbor to-night 
what was the behavior of the crew and owner? Did they go 
about their business as they are wont to do when wind and 
tide has kept them too long at sea? Did they show their faces 
before suspicion as men should who have no fear? No. They 
skulked away. They fled from question. At this moment 
they are being pursued.” 

The bishop covered his face with his hands. 

“ And so I ask you again,” resumed the Deemster, “ what 
do you intend to do with the murderer of my son?” 

“ Oh, Dan, Dan, my boy, my boy!” the bishop sobbed, and 
for a moment his grief mastered all other emotions. 

‘‘Ah! see how it is! You name your son, and you know 
that he is guilty.” 

The bishop lifted up his head, and his eyes flashed. “ I do 
not know that my son is guilty,” he said in a tone that made 
the Deemster pause. But, speedily recovering his self-com- 
mand, the Deemster continued in a tone of confidence: 

“ Your conscience tells you that it is so.” 

The bishop^s spirit was broken in a moment. 

“ What would you have me do, Thorkell?” 

“ To present your son for murder in th court of your 
barony. ” 

“Man, man, do you wish to abase me?” said the bishop. 
“ Do you come to drive me to despair? Is it not enough that 
I am bent to the very earth with grief but that you of all men 
should crush me to the dust itself with shame? Think of it— 
my son is my only tie to earth, I have none left but him; and, 
because I am a judge in the island as well as its poor priest, I 
am to take him and put him to death. ” 

Then his voice, which had been faint, grew formidable. 

“ What is it you mean by this cruel torture? If my son is 
guilty, must his crime go unpunished though his fathers 
hand is not lifted against him? For what business are you 
yourself on this little plot of earth? You are here to punish 
the evil-doer. It is for you to punish him if he is guilty. But 
no, for you to do that would be for you to be merciful. Mercy 
you will not show to him or me. And, to make a crime that 
is terrible at the best thrice shameful as well, you would put 
a father as judge over his son. Man, man, have you no pity? 
No bowels of compassion? Think of it. My son is myself, 
life of my life. Can I lop away my right hand and still keep 
all my members? Only think of it. Thorkell, Thorkell, my 
brother, think of it. 1 am a father, and so are you. Could 
you condemn to death your own son?” 


212 


THE DEEMSTER. 


The sonorous voice had broken again to a sob of suppli- 
cation. 

44 Yes, you are a father/’ said the Deemster, unmoved, 
44 but you are also a priest and a judge. Your son is guilty 
of a crime — ” 

“ Who says he is guilty?” 

44 Yourself said as much a moment since.” 

44 Have I said so? What did I say? They had no cause of 
quarrel — Dan and Ewan. They loved each other. But I can 
not think. My head aches. I fear my mind is weakened by 
these terrible events.” 

The bishop pressed his forehead hard like a man in bodily 
pain, but the Deemster showed no ruth. 

“ It is now for you to put the father aside and let the priest- 
judge come forward. It is your duty to God and your church. 
Cast your selfish interests behind you and acquit yourself like 
one to whom all eyes look up. The bishop has a sacred mis- 
sion. Fulfill it. You have punished offenders against God’s 
law and the church’s rule beforetime. Don’t let it be said 
that the laws of God and the church are to pass by the house 
of their bishop.” 

4 4 Pity, pity! have pity,” the bishop murmured. 

“ Set your own house in order, or with what courage will 
you ever again dare to intrude upon the houses of your peo- 
ple? Now is your time to show that you can practice the hard 
doctrine that you have preached. Send him to the scaffold, 
yes, to the scaffold — ” 

The bishop held up his two hands and cried: 44 Listen, 
listen. What would it avail you though my son’s life were 
given in forfeit for the life of your son? You never loved 
Ewan. Ah! it is true, as Heaven is my witness, you never 
loved him. While I shall have lost two sons at a blow. Are 
you a Christian, to thirst like this for blood? It is not justice 
you want; it is vengeance. But vengeance belongs to God.” 

“Is he not guilty?” tke Deemster answered. 44 And is it 
not your duty and mine to punish the guilty?” 

But the bishop went on impetuously, panting as he spoke, 
and in a faint, broken tone: 

“ Then if you should be mistaken— if all this that you tell 
me should be a fatal coincidence that my son can not explain 
away? What if I took him and presented him, and sent him 
to the gallows, as you say, and some day, when all that is now 
dark became light, and the truth stood revealed, what if then 
1 had to say to myself before God, 4 1 have taken the life of my 


THE DEEMSTER. 


213 


son?’ Brother, is your heart brazed out that you can think 
of it without pity?” 

The bishop had dropped to his knees. 

“ 1 see that you are a coward,” said the Deemster, con- 
temptuously. “ And so this is what your religion comes to! 
1 tell you that the eyes of the people of this island are on you. 
If you take the right course now their reverence is yours; if 
the wrong one, it will be the worst evil that has ever befallen 
you from your youth upward.” 

The bishop cried, “ Mercy, mercy, for Christ’s sake, mercy!” 
and he looked about the room with terrified eyes, as if he would 
fly from it if he could. 

But the Deemster’s lash had one still heavier blow. 

“ More, more,” he said, “ your church is on its trial also, 
and if you fail of your duty now, the people will rise and sweep 
it away.” 

Then a great spasm of strength came to the bishop, and he 
rose to his feet. 

“ Silence, sir!” he said, and the Deemster quailed visibly 
before the heat and flame of his voice and manner. 

But the spasm was gone in an instant, for his faith was dead 
as his soul was dead, and only the galvanic impulse of the out- 
raged thing remained. And truly his faith had taken his 
manhood with it, for he sat down and sobbed. In a few mo- 
ments more the Deemster left him without another word. 
Theirs had been a terrible interview, and its mark remained 
to the end like a brand of iron on the hearts of both the 
brothers. 

The night was dark but not cold, and the roads were soft 
and draggy. Over the. long mile that divided Bishop’s Court 
from Ballamona the old Deemster walked home with a mind 
more at ease than he had known for a score of years. ‘‘It 
was true enough, as he said, that I never loved Ewan,” the 
Deemster thought. “ But then whose was the fault but 
Ewan’s own? At every step he was against me, and if he 
took the side of the bishop and his waistrel son he did it to his 
own confusion. And he had his good parts, too. Patient and 
long suffering like his mother, poor woman, dead and gone. 
A little like my old father also, the simple soul. With fire, 
too, and rather headstrong at times. I wonder how it all 
ha 



Then, as he trudged along through the dark roads, his mind 
turned full on Dan. “ He must die,” he thought with con- 
tent and a secret satisfaction. “By bishop’s law or Deem- 
ster’s he can not fail but be punished with death. And so 


THE DEEMSTER. 


m 

this is the end! He was to have his foot on my neck some 
day. So much for the brave vaunt and prophecy. And when 
he is dead my fate is broken. Tut, who talks of fate in these 
days? Idle chatter and balderdash!” 

When the Deemster got to Ballamona he found the coroner, 
Quayle the Gyke, in the hall awaiting him. Jarvis Kerruish 
was on the settle pushing oft his slush-covered boots with a 
bootjack. 

“ Why, what? How’s this?” said the Deemster. 

“ They’ve escaped us so far,” said the coroner, meekly. 

“ Escaped you? What? In this little rat-hole of an island, 
and they’ve escaped you?” 

“ We gave them chase for six miles, sir. They’ve taken 
the mountains for it. Dp past the Sherragh Vane at Sulby, 
and under Snaefel) and Beinn-y-Phott — that’s their way, sir. 
And it was black dark up yonder, and we had to leave it till 
the morrow. We’ll take them, sir, make yourself easy.” 

“ Had any one seen them? Is he with them?” 

“ Old Moore, the miller at Sulby, saw them as they went by 
the mill running mortal hard. But he told us no, the captain 
wasn’t among them.” 

“ What! then you’ve been wasting your wind over the fisher- 
men while he has been clearing away?” 

Jarvis Kerruish raised his head from where he was pulling 
on his slippers. 

“ Set your mind at rest, sir,” he said, calmly. “We will 
find him, though he lies like a toad under a stone.” 

“Mettle, mettle,” the Deemster chuckled into his breast, 
and proceeded to throw off his cloak. Then he turned to the 
coroner again. 

“ Have you summoned the jury of inquiry?” 

“ 1 have, sir — six men of the parish— court-house at Ram- 
sey — eight in the morning.” 

“We must indict the whole six of them. You have their 
names? Jarvis will write them down for you. We can not 
have five of them giving evidence for the sixth.” 

The Deemster left the hall with his quick and restless step, 
and turned into the dining-room, where Mona was helping to 
lay the supper. Her face was very pale, her eyes were red 
with long weeping, she moved to and fro with a slow step, and 
misery itself seemed to sit on her. But the Deemster saw 
nothing of this. “Mona,” he said, “you must be stirring 
before day-break to-morrow.” 

She lifted her face with a look of inquiry. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


215 


6e We breakfast at half past six, and leave in the coach at 
seven.” 

With a puzzled expression she asked in a low tone where 
they were to go. 

“ To Ramsey, for the court of inquiry,” he answered with 
complacency. 

Mona’s left hand went up to her breast, and her breath 
came quick. 

4 4 But why am I to go?” she asked, timidly. 

4 4 Because in cases of this kind, when the main evidence is 
circumstantial, it is necessary to prove a motive before it is 
possible to frame an indictment.” 

44 Well, father?” Mona’s red eyes opened wide with a 
startled look, and their long lashes trembled. 

44 Well, girl, you shall prove the motive.” 

The Deemster opened the snuff-horn on the mantel-shelf. 

44 1 am to do so?” 

The Deemster glanced up sharply under his spectacles. 
44 Yes, you, child, you,” he said, with quiet emphasis, and 
lifted his pinch of snuff to his nose. 

Mona’s breast began to heave, and all her slight frame to 
quiver. 

44 Father,” she said, faintly, 44 do you mean that I am to be 
the chief witness against the man who took my brother’s life?” 

44 Well, perhaps; but we shall see. And now for supper, 
and then to bed, for we must be stirring before the lark.” 

Mona was going out of the room with a heavy step when the 
Deemster, who had seated himself at the table, raised his eyes. 
44 Wait,” he said; 44 when were you last out of the house?” 

44 Yesterday morning, sir. I was at the plowing match.” 

44 Have you had any visitors since five last night?” 

44 Visitors — five — I do not understand — ” 

44 That will do, child.” 

Jarvis Kerruish came into the room at this moment. He 
was the Deemster’s sole companion at supper that night. And 
so ended that terrible Ohristmas-day. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE DEEMSTER’S IHQUEST. 

It was at the late dawn of the following morning that Dan 
Mylrea escaped from his night-long burial in the shaft of the 
disused lead mine. On his way to Ballamona he went by the 
little shed where Mrs. Kerruish lived with her daughter Mally 


216 


THE DEEMSTER. 


The sound of his footstep on the path brought the old woman 
to the door- way. 

“ Asking pardon, sir,” the old body said, “ and which way 
may you be going?” 

Dan answered that he was going to Ballamona. 

“ Not to the Deemster’s? Yes? Och! no. Why, d’ye say? 
Well, my daughter was away at the Street last night — where 
she allis is o’ nights, more’s the pity, leaving me, a lone 
woman, to fret and fidget — and there in the house where they 
tell all newses, the guzzling craythurs, they were sayin’ as 
may be it was yourself as shouldn’t trouble the Deemster for 
a bit of a spell longer.” 

Dan took no further heed of the old woman’s warning than 
to thank her as he passed on. When he got to Ballamona the 
familiar place looked strange and empty. He knocked, but 
there was no answer. He called, but there was no reply. 
Presently a foot on the gravel woke the vacant stillness. It 
was Hommy-beg, and at sight of Dan he lifted both his hands. 

Then, amid many solemn exclamations, slowly, disjointedly, 
explaining, excusing, Hommy told what had occurred. And 
no sooner had Dan realized the business that was afoot, and 
that the Deemster, with Jarvis Kerruish and Mona, were gone 
to Ramsey on a court of inquiry touching Ewan’s death, than 
he straightway set his face in the same direction. 

“ The court begins its business at eight, you say? Well, 
good-bye, Hommy, and God bless you!” he said, and turned 
sharply away. But he stopped suddenly, and came back the 
pace or two. “ Wait, let us shake hands, old friend; we may 
not have another chance. Good-bye.” 

In a moment Dan was going at a quick pace down the road. 

It was a heavy morning. The mists were gliding slowly up 
the mountains in grim, hooded shapes, their long white skirts 
sweeping the meadows as they passed. 0 verhead the sky was 
dim and empty. Underfoot the roads were wet and thick. 
But Dan felt nothing of this wintery gloom. It did not touch 
his emancipated spirit. His face seemed to open as he walked, 
and his very stature to increase. He reflected that the lumber- 
ing coach which carried the Deemster and his daughter and 
bastard son must now be far on its way through the ruts of 
this rough turnpike that lay between Michael and Ramsey, 
And he pushed on with new vigor. 

He passed few persons on the roads. The houses seemed to 
be deserted. Here or there a little brood of children played 
about a cottage door. He hailed them cheerily as he went by, 
and could not help observing that when the little ones recog' 


THE DEEMSTEE. 21 ? 

nized him they dropped their play and huddled together at the 
threshold like sheep affrighted. 

As he passed into Ballaugh under the foot of Glen Dhoo he 
came upon Corlett Ballafayle. The great man opened his 
eyes wide at sight of Dan, and made no answer to his saluta- 
tion; but when Dan had gone on some distance he turned' as 
if by a sudden impulse, and hailed him with scant ceremony. 

“ Ay, why do you take that road?” 

Dan twisted his head, but he did not stop, and Corlett 
Ballafayle laughed in his throat at a second and more satisfy- 
ing reflection, and then, without waiting for an answer to his 
question, he waved the back of one hand, and said, “ All 
right. Follow on. It’s nothing to me.” 

Dan had seen the flicker of good-will, followed by the flame 
of uncharity, that flashed over the man's face, but he had no 
taste or time for parley. Pushing on past the muggy inn by 
the bridge, past the smithy that stood there and the brewery 
that stood opposite, he came into the village. There the 
women, standing at their doors, put their heads together, 
looked after him and whispered, and, like Corlett Ballafayle, 
forgot to answer his greeting. It was then that over his new- 
found elevation of soul Dan felt a creeping sense of shame. 
The horror and terror that had gone before had left no room 
for the lower emotion. Overwhelmed by a crushing idea of 
his guilt before God, he had not realized his position in the 
eyes of his fellow-men. But now he realized it and knew that 
his crime was known. He saw himself as a hunted man, a 
homeless, friendless wanderer on the earth, a murderer from 
whom all must shrink. His head fell into his breast as he 
walked, his eyes dropped to the ground, he lifted his face no 
more to the faces of the people whom he passed, and gave 
none his salutation. 

The mists lifted off the mountains as the morning wore on, 
and the bald crowns were seen against the empty sky. Dan 
quickened his pace. When he came to Sulby it had almost 
quickened to a run, and as he went by the mill in the village 
he noticed that old Moore, the miller, who was a square-set, 
middle-aged man with a heavy jowl, stood at the open door 
and watched him. He did not lift his eyes, but he was con- 
scious that Moore turned hurriedly into the mill, and that at 
the next instant one of his men came as hurriedly out of it. 

In a few minutes more he was at the bridge that crosses the 
Suiby River, and there he was suddenly confronted by a gang 
of men, with Moore at their head. They had crossed the river 
by the ford at the mill-side, and running along the southern 


218 


THE DEEMSTER. 


bank of it had come up to the bridge at the moment that Dan 
was about to cross it from the road. Armed with heavy 
sticks, which they carried threateningly, they called on Dan 
to surrender himself. Dan stopped, looked into their hot 
faces, and said: “ Men, I know what you think, but you are 
wrong. 1 am not running away; I am going to Ramsey court- 
house.” 

At that the men laughed derisively, and the miller said with 
a grin that if Dan was on his road to Ramsey they would take 
the pleasure of his company, just to see him safely landed 
there. 

Dan's manner was quiet. He looked about him with calm 
but searching looks. At the opposite bank of the river, close 
to the foot of the bridge, there was a smithy. At that moment 
the smith was hooping a cart-wheel, and his striker set down 
his sledge and tied up his leather apron to look on and listen. 

“ Men,” said Dan, again in a voice that was low, but strong 
and resolute, ‘ 4 it is the truth that I am on my way to Ramsey 
court-house, but 1 mean to go alone, and don't intend to allow 
any man to take me there as a prisoner.” 

“ A likely tale,” said the miller, and with that he stepped 
up to Dan and laid a hand upon his arm. At the next mo- 
ment the man of flour had loosed his grip with a shout, and 
his white coat was rolling in the thick mud of the wet road. 
Then the other men closed around with sticks uplifted, but 
before they quite realized what they were to do, Dan had 
twisted some steps aside, darted through them, laid hold of 
the smith's sledge, swung it on his shoulder, and faced about. 

“ Now, men,” he said as calmly as before, “ none of you 
shall take me to Ramsey, and none of you shall follow me 
there. I must go alone.” 

The men had fallen quickly back. Dan's strength of 
muscle was known, and his stature was a thing to respect. 
They were silent for a moment and dropped their sticks. 
Then they began to mutter among themselves, and ask what 
it was to them after all, and what for should they meddle, and 
what was a few shillin' any way? 

Dan and his sledge passed through. The encounter had 
cost him some minutes of precious time, but the ardor of his 
purpose had suffered no abatement from the untoward event, 
though his heart was the heavier for it and the dreary day 
looked the darker. 

Near the angle of the road that turns to the left to Ramsey 
and to the right to the Sherragh Vane, there was a little 
thatched cottage of one story, with its window level with the 



Swung it on his shoulder and faced about . — Page 218. 




✓ 


THE DEEMSTEft. 


&19 


road. It was the house of a cobbler named Callister, a lean, 
hungry, elderly man, who lived there alone under the ban of 
an old rumor of evil doings of some sort in his youth. Dan 
knew the poor soul. Such human ruins had never been 
quarry to him, the big-hearted scapegrace, and now drawing- 
near, he heard the beat of the old man’s hammer as he 
worked. The hammering ceased, and Callister appeared at 
his door. 

44 Capt’n,” he stammered, 44 do you know — do you know?” 
He tried to frame his words and could not, and at last he 
blurted out: 44 Quayle the Gyke drove by an hour ago. ” 

Dan knew what was in the heart of the poor battered creat- 
ure, and it touched him deeply. He was moving off without 
speaking, merely waving his hand for answer and adieu, when 
the cobbler’s dog, as lean and hungry as its master to look 
upon, came from the house and looked up at Dan out of its 
rheumy eyes and licked his hand. 

The cobbler still stood at his door, fumbling in his fingers 
his cutting-knife, worn obliquely to the point, and struggling 
to speak more plainly. 

44 The Whitehaven packet leaves Ramsey to-night, capt’n,” 
he said. 

Dan waved his hand once more. His heart sunk yet lower. 
Only by the very dregs of humanity, the very quarry of man- 
kind, and by the dumb creatures that licked his hand, was his 
fellowship rewarded. Thus had he wasted his fidelity, and 
thrown his loyalty away. In a day he had become a hunted 
man. So much for the world’s gratitude and even the 
world’s pity. And yet, shunned or hunted, a mark for the 
finger of shame or an aim for the hand of hate, he felt, as he 
had felt before, bound by strong ties to his fellow-creatures. 
He was about to part from them; he was meeting them for 
the last time. Not even their coldest glance of fear or sus- 
picion made a call on his resolution. 

At every step his impatience became more lively. Through 
Lezayre, and past Milntown, he walked at a quick pace. He 
dared not run, lest his eagerness should seem to betray him 
and he should meet with another such obstacle as kept him 
back at Sulby Bridge. At length he was walking through the 
streets of Ramsey. He noticed that most of the people who 
passed him gave him a hurried and startled look, and went 
quickly on. He reached the court-house at last. Groups 
stood about the Saddle Inn, and the south side of the in- 
closure within the rails was crowded. The clock in the church 
tower in the market-place beyond was striking nine. It was 


220 


THE DEEMSTER. 


while building that square tower, twenty years before, that the 
mason Looney had dropped to his knees on the scaffold and 
asked the blessing of the bishop as he passed. To the bishop’s 
son the clock of the tower seemed now to be striking the hour 
of doom. 

The people within the rails of the court-yard fell aside as 
Dan pushed his way through, and the dull buzz of their gossip 
fell straightway to a great silence. But those who stood 
nearest the porch were straining their necks toward the inside 
of the court-house in an effort to see and hear. Standing be- 
hind them for an instant Dan heard what was said in whispers 
by those within to those without, and thus he learned what 
had been done. 

The Deemster’s inquest had been going on for an hour. 
First, the landlady of the Three Legs of Man had sworn 
that, at about three o’clock on Christmas-eve, Parson Ewan 
had inquired at her house for Mr. Dan Mylrea, and had been 
directed to the creek known sometimes as the Lockjaw. 
Then, the butcher from the shambles in the lane had sworn 
that Parson Ewan had passed him walking toward the creek; 
and the longshore fishermen who brought the body to Bishop’s 
Court gave evidence as to when (ten o’clock on Christmas 
morning) and where (the coral ground for herrings, called the 
Mooragh) it came ashore. After these, Jarvis Kerruish had 
sworn to following Parson Ewan within half an hour of the 
deceased leaving Ballamona, to hearing a loud scream as he 
approached the lane leading to Orris Head, and to finding at 
the creek the fisher lad Davy Fayle, whose manner awakened 
strong suspicion when he was questioned as to whether he had 
seen Parson Ewan and his master, Mr. Daniel Mylrea. The 
wife of one of the crew of the “ Ben-my-Chree ” had next 
been called to say that the fishing-boat had been at sea from 
high water on Christmas-eve. The woman had given her evi- 
dence with obvious diffidence and some confusion, repeating 
and contradicting herself, being sharply reprimanded by the 
Deemster, and finally breaking down into a torrent of tears. 
When she had been removed the housekeeper at the old Balla- 
mona, an uncomfortable, bewildered old body, stated that Mr. 
Dan Mylrea had not been home since the early morning on the 
day before Christmas-day. ' Finally, the harbor-master at Peel 
had identified the sail-cloth in which the body had been 
wrapped as a drift yawl-sail of the “ Ben-my-Chree,” and he 
had also sworn that the lugger of that name had come into the 
harbor at low water the previous night, with the men QuiJ- 


THE DEEMSTER. 221 

leash, Teare, Corkell, Crennel, and Davy Fayle, as well as 
the owner, Mr. Dan Mylrea, aboard of her. 

Without waiting to hear more, Dan made one great call on 
his resolution and pushed his way through the porch into the 
court-house. Then he realized that there was still some virtue 
left in humanity. No sooner had the people in the court be- 
come aware of his presence among them than one stepped 
before him as if to conceal him from those in front, while an- 
other tapped him on the shoulder, and elbowed a way out, 
beckoning him to follow as if some pressing errand called him 
away. 

But Dan’s purpose was fixed, and no cover for cowardice 
availed to shake it. Steadfast and silent he stood at the back 
of the court, half hidden by the throng about him, trying to 
look on with a cool countenance, and to fix his attention on 
the proceedings of his own trial. At first he was conscious of 
no more than the obscurity of the dusky place and a sort of 
confused murmur that rose from a table at the further end. 
For awhile he looked stupidly on, and even trembled slightly. 
But all at once he found himself listening and seeing all that 
was goiug on before him. 

The court-house was densely crowded. On the bench sat 
the Deemster, his thin, quick face as sharp as a pen within 
his heavy wig. Jarvis Kerruish and Quayle, the coroner, 
stood at a table beneath. Stretched on the top of this table 
was a canvas sail. Six men from Michael sat to the right as 
a jury. But Dan’s eyes passed over all these as if scarcely 
conscious of their presence, and turned by an instinct of which 
he knew nothing toward the witness-box. And there Mona 
herself was now standing. Her face was very pale and drawn 
hard about the lips, which were set firm, though the nostrils 
quivered visibly. She wore a dark cloak of half -conventual 
pattern, with a hood that fell back from the close hat that sat 
like a nun’s cap about her smooth forehead. Erect she stood, 
with the fire of two hundred eager eyes upon her, but her 
bosom heaved and the fingers of her ungloved hand gripped 
nervously the rail in front of her. 

In an instant the thin shrill voice of the Deemster broke on 
Dan’s consciousness, and he knew that he was listening to his 
own trial, with Mona put up to give evidence against him. 

“ When did you see your brother last?” 

“ On the afternoon of the day before yesterday.” 

“ At what hour?” 

“ At about two o’clock.” 

“ What passed between you at that interview?” 


222 


THE DEEMSTEB. 


There was no answer to this question. 

“ Tell the jury if there was any unpleasantness between you 
and your brother at two o'clock the day before yesterday. " 

There was a pause, and then the silence was broken by the 
reply, meekly spoken, 4 4 It is true that he was angry." 

4 4 What was the cause of his anger?" 

Another pause and no answer. The Deemster repeated his 
question, and still there was no reply. 

44 Listen: on your answer to this question the burden of the 
indictment must rest. Circumstance points but too plainly to 
a crime. It points to one man as perpetrator of that crime, 
and to five other men as accessories to it. But it is necessary 
that the jury should gather an idea of the motive that inspired 
it. And so I ask again, what was the difference between you 
and your brother at your interview on the afternoon of the day 
before yesterday?" „ 

There was a deep hush in the court. A gloomy, echoless 
silence, like that which goes before a storm, seemed to brood 
over the place. All eyes were turned to the witness-box. 

44 Answer," said the Deemster, with head aslant. 44 1 ask 
for an answer — I demand it. " 

Then the witness lifted up her great, soft, liquid eyes to the 
Deemster's face, and spoke: 44 Is it the judge or the father 
that demands an answer?" she said. 

44 The judge, the judge," the Deemster replied with em- 
phasis, 44 we know of no father here." 

At that the burden that had rested on Mona's quivering face 
seemed to lift away. 44 Then, if it is the judge that asks the 
question, I will not answer it. " 

The Deemster leaned back in his seat, and there was a low 
rumble among the people in the court. Dan found his breath 
coming audibly from his throat, his finger-nails digging 
trenches in his palms, and his teeth set so hard on his lips 
that both teeth and lips were bleeding. 

After a moment's silence the Deemster spoke again, but 
more softly than before, and in a tone of suavity. 

44 If the judge has no power with you, make answer to the 
father," and he repeated his question. 

Amid silence that was painful Mona said, in a tremulous 
voice: 44 It is not in a court of justice that a father should ex- 
pect an answer to a question like that. " 

Then the Deemster lost all self-control, and shouted in his 
shrill treble that, whether as father or judge, the witness's 
answer he should have; that on that answer the guilty man 


THE DEEMSTER. 


223 


should yet be indicted, and that even as it would be damning 
to that man so it should hang him. 

The spectators held their breath at the Deemster’s words 
and looked aghast at the livid face on the bench. They were 
accustomed to the Deemster’s fits of rage, but such an out- 
break of wrath had never before been witnessed. The gloomy 
silence was unbroken for a moment, and then there came the 
sound of the suppressed weeping of the witness. 

“ Stop that noise!” said the Deemster. “We know for whom 
you shed your tears. But you shall yet do more than cry for 
the man. If a word of yours can send him to the gallows, 
that word shall yet be spoken.” 

Dan saw and heard all. The dark place, the judge, the 
jury, the silent throng, seemed to swim about him. For a 
moment he struggled with himself, scarcely able to control the 
impulse to push through and tear the Deemster from is seat. 
At the next instant, with complete self-possession and strong 
hold of his passions, he had parted the people in front of him, 
and was making his way to the table beneath the bench. 
Dense as the crowd was it seemed to open of itself before him, 
and only the low rumble of many subdued voices floated faintly 
in his ear. He was conscious that all eyes were upon him, but 
most of all that Mona was watching him with looks of pain 
and fear. 

He never felt stronger than at that moment. Long enough 
he had hesitated, and too often he had been held back, but 
now his time was come. He stopped in front of the table, 
and said in a full clear voice, “ I am here to surrender — I am 
guilty.” 

The Deemster looked down in bewilderment; but the cor- 
oner, recovering quickly from his first amazement, bustled up 
with the air of a constable making a capture, and put the 
fetters on Dan’s wrists. 

What happened next was never afterward rightly known to 
any of the astonished spectators. The Deemster asked the 
jury for their verdict, and immediately afterward he called on 
the clerk to prepare the indictment. 

“Is it to be for this man only, or for all six?” the clerk 
asked. 

“ All six,” the Deemster answered. 

Then the prisoner spoke again. “ Deemster,” he said, “ the 
other men are innocent. ” 

“ Where are they?” 

“ I do not know.” 

“ If innocent, why are they in Hiding?” 


224 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ I tell you, sir, they are innocent. Their only fault is that 
they have tried to be loyal to me. ” 

“ Were they with you when the body was buried?” 

Dan made no answer. 

“ Did they bury it?” 

Still no answer. The Deemster turned to the clerk, “ The 
six.” 

“ Deemster,” Dan said, with stubborn resolution, “ why 
should 1 tell you what is not true? I have come here when, 
like the men themselves, I might have kept away.” 

“You have come here, prisoner, when the hand of the law 
was upon you, when its vengeance was encircling you, entrap- 
ping you, when it was useless to hold out longer; you have 
come here thinking to lessen your punishment by your sur- 
render. But you have been mistaken. A surrender extorted 
when capture is certain, like a confession made when crime 
can not be denied, has never yet been allowed to lessen tlitf 
punishment of the guilty. Nor shall it lessen it now.” 

Then as the Deemster rose a cry rang though the court. It 
was such a cry out of a great heart as tells a whole story to a 
multitude. In a moment the people saw and knew all. They 
looked at the two who stood before them, Dan and Mona, the 
prisoner and the witness, with eyes that filled, and from their 
dry throats there rose a deep groan from their midst. 

“ I tell you. Deemster, it is false, and the men are inno- 
cent,” said Dan. 

The clerk was seen to hand a document to the Deemster, 
who took a pen and signed it. 

“ The accused stands committed for trial at the Court of 
General Jail Delivery.” 

At the next moment the Deemster was gone. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

FA THER AND SON. 

The prison for felons awaiting trial in the civil courts was 
in Castle Rushen, at Castletown, but Dan Mylrea was not 
taken to it. There had been a general rising in the south of 
the island on the introduction of a coinage of copper money, 
and so many of the rioters had been arrested and committed 
for trial, without bail, at the Court of General Jail Delivery, 
that the prison at Castle Rushen was full to overflowing. 
Twenty men had guarded the place day and night, being re- 
lieved every twenty-four hours bv as many more from each 



The Bishop in the Dungeon . — Page 225. 





✓ 


THE DEEMSTER. 


225 


parish in rotation, some of them the kith and kin of the men 
imprisoned, and all summoned 'to Castletown in the morning 
by the ancient mode of fixing a wooden cross over their doors 
at night. 

Owing to this circumstance the Deemster made the extra- 
ordinary blunder of ordering his coroner to remove Dan to the 
prison beneath the ruined castle at Peel town. Now, the prison 
on St. Patrick’s Islet had for centuries been under the control 
of the Spiritual Courts, and was still available for use in the 
execution of the ecclesiastical censures. The jailer was the 
parish sumner, and the sole governor and director was the 
bishop himself. All this the Deemster knew full well, and 
partly in defiance of his brother’s authority, partly in con- 
tempt of it, but mainly in bitter disdain of his utter helpless- 
ness, where his son’s guilt was manifest and confessed, he 
arrogated the right, without sanction from the spiritual 
powers, of committing Dan to the Church prison, the civil 
prison being full. 

It was a foul and loathsome dungeon, and never but once 
had Bishop Mylrea been known to use it. Dark, small, damp, 
entered by a score of narrow steps, down under the vaults on 
the floor of the chapel, over the long runnels made in the rock 
by the sea, it was as vile a hole as the tyranny of the Church 
ever turned into a jail for the punishment of those who re- 
sisted its authority. 

The sumner in charge w r as old Paton Gorry, of Kirk Pat- 
rick, a feeble soul with a vast respect for authority, and no 
powers of nice distinction between those who were placed above 
him. When he received the Deemster’s warrant for Dan’s 
committal he did not doubt its validity; and when Quayle, 
the coroner, for his own share ordered that the prisoner should 
be kept in the close confinement of the dungeon, he acquiesced 
without question. 

If Dan’s humiliation down to this moment had not been gall 
and wormwood to his proud and stubborn spirit, the fault did 
not lie at the door of Quayle the Gyke. Every indignity that 
an unwilling prisoner could have been subjected to Dan under- 
went. From the moment of leaving the court-house at Eam- 
sey, Dan was pushed and huddled and imperiously commanded 
with such an abundant lack of need and reason that at length 
the people who crowded the streets or looked from their win- 
dows — the same people, many of them, who had shrunk from 
Dan as he entered the town— shouted at the coroner and 
groaned at him. But Dan himself, who had never before ac 
cepted a blow from any man without returning it, was seen to 


226 


THE DEEMSTER. 


walk tamely by the coroner’s side, towering above him in 
great stature, but taking his rough handling like a child at his 
knees. 

At the door of the prison where Quayle’s function ended 
that of the sumner began, and old Gorry was a man of an- 
other mold. Twenty times he had taken charge of persons 
imprisoned six days for incontinence, and once he had held the 
governor’s wife twelve hours for slander, and once again a 
fighting clergyman seven days for heresies in looking toward 
Rome, but never before had he put man, woman, or child into 
the pestilential hole under the floor of the old chapel. Dan 
he remembered since the bishop’s son was a boy in corduroys, 
and when the rusty key of the dungeon turned on him with a 
growl in its wards, and old Gorry went shivering to the guard- 
room above and kindled himself a fire there and sat and 
smoked, the good man under his rough surtout got the betjter 
of the bad jailer. Then down he went again, and with a cer- 
tain shamefacedness, some half-comic, half-pathetic efforts of 
professional reserve, he said he wouldn’t object, not he, if Dan 
had a mind to come up and warm himself. But Dan declined 
with words of cold thanks. 

“ No, Gorry,” he said, “ I don’t know that I feel the cold.” 

“ Oh, all right, all right, sit ye there, sit ye there,” said 
Gorry. He whipped about with as much of largeness as he 
could simulate, rattled his keys as he went back, and even 
hummed a tune as he climbed the narrow stairs. But, warm- 
ing itself at the fire, the poor human nature in the old man’s 
breast began to tear him pitilessly. He could get no peace for 
memories that would arise of the days when Dan plagued him 
sorely, the sad little happy dog. Then up he rose again, and 
down he went to the dungeon once more. 

“ I respects the ould bishop,” he said, just by way of pre- 
liminary apology and to help him to carry off his intention, 
“ and if it be so that a man has done wrong 1 don’t see — I 
don’t see,” he stammered, “ it isn’t natheral that he should 
be starved alive any way, and a cold winter’s night too.” 

“ It’s no more than I deserve,” Dan mumbled; and at that 
word old Gorry whipped about as before, repeating loftily, 
“ Sit ye there, sit ye there.” 

It was not for him to cringe and sue to a prisoner to come 
up out of that foul hole, och! no; and the bishop’s sumner in- 
flated his choking chest and went back for another pipe. But 
half an hour later the night had closed in, and old Gorry, with 
a lantern in his hand, was at the door of Dan’s prison again. 

“ To tell the truth, sir,” he muttered, “ I can’t get lave for 


THE DEEMSTER. 


227 


a wink of sleep up yonder, and if you don’t come up to the 
fire I wouldn't trust but I'll be forced to stay down here in 
the cold myself. " 

Before Dan could make answer there came a loud knocking 
from overhead. In another moment the key of the door had 
turned in its lock from without, and Gorry's uncertain footfall 
was retreating on the steps. 

When Dan had first been left alone in his dark cell he had 
cast himself down on the broad slab cut from the rock which 
was his only seat and bed. His suspense was over; the weight 
of uncertainty was lifted from his brain; and he tried to tell 
himself that he had done well. He thought of Ewan now with 
other feelings than before — of his uprightness, his tenderness, 
his brotherly affection, his frequent intercession and no less 
frequent self-sacrifice. Then he thought of his own headlong 
folly, his blank insensitiveness, his cold ingratitude, and, last 
of all, of his blundering passion and mad wrath. All else on 
both sides was blotted from his memory in that hour of dark 
searching. Alone with his crime — tortured no more by blind 
hopes of escaping its penalty, or dread misgivings as to the 
measure of his guilt — his heart went out to the true friend 
whose life he had taken, with a great dumb yearning and a bit- 
ter remorse. No cruel voice whispered now in palliation of 
his offense that it had not been murder, but the accident of 
self-defense. He had proposed the fight that ended with 
Ewan's death, and, when Ewan would have abandoned it, he, 
on his part, would hear of no truce. Murder it was; and, bad 
as murder is at the best, this murder had been, of all murders, 
most base and foul. Yes, he had done well. Here alone 
could he know one hour of respite from terrible thoughts. 
This dark vault was his only resting-place until he came to lie 
in the last resting-place of all. There could be no going back. 
Life was forever closed against him. He had spilled the blood 
of the man who had loved him with more than a brother's 
love, and to whom his own soul had been grappled with hooks 
of steel. It was enough, and the sick certainty of the doom 
before him was easiest to bear. 

It was with thoughts like these that Dan had spent his first 
hours in prison, and when old Gorry had interrupted them 
time after time with poor little troubles about the freezing 
cold of the pestilential place he hardly saw through the old 
man's simulation into the tender bit of human nature that lay 
behind it. 

A few minutes after Gorry had left the cell, in answer to 
the loud knocking that had echoed through the empty cham 


228 


THE DEEMSTER. 


bers overhead, Dan could hear that he was returning to it, 
halting slowly down the steps with many a pause, and mum- 
bling remarks meantime, as if lighting some one who came 
after him. 

“ Yes, my lord, it’s dark, very dark. Fll set the lantern 
here, my lord, and turn the key.” 

In another moment old Gorry was at Dan’s side, saying, in 
a fearful under-tone, “ Lord a massy! It’s the bishop hisself. 
I lied to him mortal, so I did — but no use — 1 said you were 
sleeping, but no good at all at all. He wouldn’t take rest 
without putting a sight on you. Here he is — Come in, my 
lord.” 

Almost before Dan’s mind, distraught by other troubles, 
had time to grasp what Gorry said, the old jailer had clapped 
his lantern on the floor of the cell, and had gone from it, and 
Dan was alone with his father. 

“ Dan, are you awake?” the bishop asked, in a low, eager 
tone. His eyes were not yet familiar with the half light of the 
dark place, and he could not see his son. But Dan saw his 
father only too plainly, and one glance at him in that first in- 
stant of recovered consciousness went far to banish as an empty 
sophism the soothing assurance he had lately nursed at his 
heart that in what he had done he had done well. 

The bishop was a changed and shattered man. His very 
stature seemed to have shrunk, and his Jovian white head was 
dipped into his breast. His great calm front was gone, and in 
the feeble light of the lantern on the floor his eyes were altered 
and his face seemed to be cut deep with lines of fear and even 
of cunning. His irresolute mouth was half open, as if it had 
only just emitted a startled cry. In one of his hands he held 
a small parcel bound tightly with a broad strap, and the other 
hand wandered nervously in the air before him. 

Dan saw everything in an instant. This, then, was the 
first fruits of that day’s work. He rose from his seat. 

“ Father!” he cried, in a faint tremulous voice. 

“ My son!” the bishop answered, and for some swift mo- 
ments thereafter the past that had been very bitter to both 
was remembered no more by either. 

But the sweet oblivion was cruelly brief. “ Wait,” the 
bishop whispered, “ are we alone?” And with that the once 
stately man of God crept on tiptoe like a cat to the door of 
the cell, and put his head to it and listened. 

16 Art thou there, Paton Gorry?” he asked, feebly simulating 
his accustomed tone of quiet authority. 

Old Gorry answered from the other side of the door that he 


THE DEEMSTER. 


229 


was there, that he was sitting on the steps, that he was not 
sleeping, but waiting my lord’s return. 

The bishop crept back to Dan’s side with the same cat-like 
step as before. “ You are safe, my son,” he whispered, in 
his low, eager tone. “ You shall leave this place. It is my 
prison, and you shall go free.” 

Dan had watched his father’s movements with a sickening 
sense. 

“ Then you do not know that 1 surrendered?” he said, 
faintly. 

“Yes, yes, oh, yes, I know it. But that was when your 
arrest was certain. But now — listen.” 

Dan felt as if his father had struck him across the face. 
“That was what the Deemster said,” he began; “but it is 
wrong.” 

“ Listen — they have nothing against you. I know all. 
They can not convict you save on your own confession. And 
why should you confess?” 

“Why?” 

“ Don’t speak — don’t explain — I must not hear you — list- 
en!” and the old man put one arm on his son’s shoulder and 
his mouth to his ear. “ There is only one bit of tangible evi- v 
dence against you, and it is here; look!” and he lifted before' 
Dan’s face the parcel he carried in his other trembling hand. 
Then down he went on one knee, put the parcel on the floor, 
and unclasped the strap. The parcel fell open. It contained 
a coat, a hat, two militia daggers, and a large heavy stone. 

“ Look!” the bishop whispered again, in a note of triumph, 
and as he spoke a grin of delight was struck out of his saintly 
old face. 

Dan shuddered at the sight. 

“ Where did you get them?” he asked. 

The bishop gave a little grating laugh. 

“ They were brought me by some of my good people,” he 
answered. “ Oh, yes, good people all of them; and they will 
not tell. Oh, no, they have promised me to be silent.” 

“ Promised you?” 

“Yes — listen again. Last night — it was dark, I think it 
must have been past midnight — I went to all their houses. 
They were in bed, but I knocked, and they came down to me. 
Yes, they gave me their word — on the Book they gave it. 
Good people all- — Jabez the tailor, Stean the cobbler, Juan of 
Ballacry, and Thormod in the Street. I remember every 
man of them. ” 

“ Father, do you say you went to these people — these, the 


330 


THE DEEMSTER. 


very riff-raff of the island — you went to them — you, and at 
midnight — and begged them — 99 

44 Hush, it is nothing. Why not? But this is important.” 
The bishop, who was still on his knee, was buckling up the 
parcel again. 44 You can sink it in the sea. Did you mark 
the stone? That will carry it to the bottom. And when you 
are in the boat it will be easy to drop everything overboard . 99 

44 The boat?” 

“ Ah! have 1 not told you? Thormod Mylechreest — you re- 
member him? A good man, Thormod, a tender heart, too, 
and wronged by his father, poor misguided man. Well, Myle- 
chreest has promised — -I have just left him — to come down to 
the harbor at nine to-night, and take the fishing- smack, the 
4 Ben-my-Chree, ? and bring her round to the west coast of St. 
Patrick’s Islet, and cast anchor there, and then come ashore 
in the boat, and wait for you.” 

“Wait for me, father?” 

“ Yes; for this prison is mine, and I shall open its doors to 
whomsoever it pleases me to liberate. Look!” 

The bishop rose to his full height, threw back his head, and 
with a feeble show of his wonted dignity strode to the door of 
the cell and cried, in a poor stifled echo of his accustomed 
strong tone, “ Patou Gorry, open thou this door.” 

Old Gorry answered from without, and presently the door 
was opened. 

“Wider.” 

The door was thrown wide. 

4 4 Now, give me the keys, Paton Gorry,” said the bishop, 
with the same assumption of authority. 

Old Gorry handed his keys to the bishop. 

44 And get thee home, and stay there.” 

Old Gorry touched his cap and went up the steps. 

Then, with a bankrupt smile of sorry triumph, the bishop 
turned to his son. 44 You see,” hs said, “you are free. Let 
me look— what is the hour?” He fumbled for his watch. 
44 Ah, I had forgotten. I paid my watch away to poor Patrick 
Looney. No matter. At nine by the clock Mylechreest will 
come for you, and you will go to your boat and set sail for 
Scotland, or England, or Ireland, or — or — 99 

Dan could bear up no longer. His heart was choking. 
“ Father, father, my fathsr, what are you saying?” he cried. 

“Iam saying that you are free to leave this place.” 

44 1 will not go — I can not go.” 

The bishop fetched a long breath and paused for a moment. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


231 


He put one trembling hand to his forehead, as if to steady his 
reeling and heated brain. 

“You can not stay,” he said. “ Hark! do you hear the 
wind how it moans? Or is it the sea that beats on the rock 
outside? All over our heads are the dead of ten generations . 99 

But Dan was suffocating with shame; the desolation around, 
the death that was lying silent above, and the mother of sor- 
rows that was wailing beneath had no terrors left for him. 

“Father, my father,” he cried again, “think what you 
ask me to do. Only think of it. You ask me to allow you to 
buy the silence of the meanest hinds alive. And at what a 
price? At the price of the influence, the esteem, the love, and 
the reverence that you have won by the labor of twenty years. 
And to what end? To the end that I — 1 — ” 

“ To the end that you may live, my son. Remember what 
your father’s love has been to you. No, not that — but think 
what it must have been to him. Your father would know you 
were alive. It is true he would never, never see you. Yes, 
we should always be apart — you there, and I here — and I 
should take your hand and see your face no more. But you 
would be alive — ” 

“ Father, do you call it living? Think if I could bear it. 
Suppose 1 escaped — suppose I were safe in some place far away 
— Australia, America, anywhere out of the reach of shame and 
death — suppose I were well, ay, and prosperous as the world 
goes — what then?” 

“ Then 1 should be content, my son. Yes, content, and 
thanking God.” 

“ And 1 should be the most wretched of men. Only think 
of it, and picture me there. I should know, though there 
were none to tell me, I should remember it as often as the sun 
rose above me, that at home, thousands of miles away, my 
poor father, the righteous bishop that once was, the leader of 
his people and their good father, was the slave of the lowest 
offal of them all, powerless to raise his hand for the hands that 
were held over him, dumb to reprove for the evil tongues that 
threatened to speak ill. And, as often as night came and 1 
tried to sleep, I should see him there growing old, very old, 
and, may be, very feeble, and wanting an arm to lean on, and 
good people to honor him and to make him forget — yes, forget 
the mad shipwreck of his son’s life, but with eyes that could 
not lift themselves from the earth for secret shame, tortured 
by fears of dishonor, self-tormented and degraded before the 
face of his God. No, no, no, I can not take such sacrifice.” 

The bishop had drawn nearer to Dan and tried to take his 


232 


THE DEEMSTER. 


liand. When Dan was silent he did not speak at once, and 
when Dan sat on his stone seat he sat beside him, gentle as a 
child, and very meek and quiet, and felt for his hand again, 
and held it, though Dan would have drawn it away. Then, 
as they sat together, nearer the old bishop crept, nearer and 
yet nearer, until one of his trembling arms encircled Dan’s 
neck, and the dear head was drawn down to his swelling, throb- 
bing breast, as if it were a child's head still, and it was a fa- 
ther's part to comfort it and to soothe away its sorrows. 

“ Then we will go together," he said, after a time, in a 
faint forlornness of voice, “ to the utmost reaches of the earth, 
leaving all behind us, and thinking no more of the past. Yes, 
we will go together," he said, very quietly, and he rose to his 
feet, still holding Dan's hand. 

Dan was suffocating with shame. “ Father," he said, I 
see all now; you think me innocent, and so you would leave 
everything for my sake. But I am a guilty man." 

“Hush! you shall not say that. Don't tell me that. No 
one shall tell me that. I will not hear it." 

The hot eagerness of the bishop's refusal to hear with his 
ears the story of his son's guilt told Dan but too surely that 
he had already heard it with his heart. 

“ Father, no one would need to tell you. You would find it 
out for yourself. And think of that awful undeceiving! You 
would take your son's part against the world, believing in 
him, but you would read his secret bit by bit, day by day. 
His crime would steal in between you like a specter, it would 
separate you hour by hour, until at length you would be for- 
ever apart. And that end would be the worst end of all. No, 
it can not be. Justice is against it; love is against it. And 
God, I think, God must be against it, too." 

“God!" 

Dan did not hear. “ Yes, I am guilty," he went on. “I 
have killed the man who loved me as his own soul. He would 
have given his life for my life, even as he gave his honor for 
my honor. And 1 slew him. Ewan! Ewan! my brother, 
my brother!" he cried, and where he sat he buried his face in 
his hands. 

The bishop stood over his son with the same gentle calm 
that had come upon him in the cell, and with not one breath 
of the restless fever with which he entered it. Once again he 
tried to take Dan's hand and to hold it, and to meet with his 
own full orbs Dan's swimming eyes. 

“ Yes, father, it is right that I should die, and it is necers- 
sary. Perhaps God will take my death as an atonement — " 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


233 


“ Atonement I’' 

“ Or, if there is no atonement, there is only hell for my 
crime, and before God I am guilty !” 

“ Before God!” 

The bishop echoed Dan’s words in a dull, mechanical un° 
der-breath, and stood a long time silent while Dan poured 
forth his bitter remorse. Then he said, speaking with some- 
thing of his own courageous calm of voice, from something 
like his own pure face, and with some of the upright wrinkles 
of his high forehead smoothed away, “ Dan, I will go home 
and think. I seem to be awakening from a dreadful night- 
mare in a world where no God is, and no light reigns, but all 
is dark. To tell you the truth, Dan, I fear my faith is not 
what it was or should be. I thought I knew God’s ways with 
His people, and then it seemed as if,, after all these years, 1 
had not known Him. But I am only a poor priest, and a very 
weak old man. Good-night, my son, 1 will go home and 
think. I am like one who runs to save a child from a great 
peril and finds a man stronger than himself and braver; one 
who looks on death face to face and quails not. Good-night, 
Dan, I will go home and pray.” 

And so he went his way, the man of God, in his weakness. 
He left his son on the stone seat, with covered face, the lantern 
and the parcel on the floor, and the door of the cell wide open. 
The keys he carried half consciously in his hand. He stum- 
bled along in the darkness down the winding steps hewn from 
the rock to the boat at the little wooden jetty, where a boat- 
man sat awaiting him. The night was very dark, and the 
sea’s loud moan and its dank salt breath were in the air. He 
did not see, he did not hear, he did not feel. But there was 
one in that lonesome place who saw his dark figure as he 
passed. “Who is there?” said an eager voice, as he went 
through the deep portcullis and out at the old notched and 
barred door ajar. But the bishop neither answered nor heard. 
At the house in Castle Street, near to the quay, he stopped 
and knocked. The door was opened by the old sumner. 

“I’ve brought you the keys, Paton Gorry. Go back to your 
charge.” 

“ Did you lock the doors, my lord?” 

“ Yes — no, no — I must have forgotten. I fear my mind — 
but it is of no moment. Go back, Paton — it will be enough.” 

“ I’ll go, my lord,” said the sumner. 

He went back, but others had been there before him. 


234 


THE DEEMSTEB. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

DIVINATION'. 

Well satisfied with this day’s work, the Deemster drove 
from the Ramsey court-house to midday dinner with his fa- 
ther-in-law, the old archdeacon, taking Jarvis Kerruish with 
him. Mona he sent home in the lumbering car driven by the 
coroner. It suited well with the girl’s troubled mind to be 
alone, and when night fell in and the Deemster had not re- 
turned, the grim gloom of the lonely house on Slieu Dhoo 
brought her no terrors. But toward nine o’clock the gaunt 
silence of the place was broken, and from that time until lonf* 
after midnight Ballamona was a scene of noise and confusion. 

First came blind Kerry, talking loudly along the passages, 
wringing her hands, and crying, “Aw, dear! oh, mam! oh, 
goodness me!” 

Mastha Dan was no longer in prison, he had been kidnapped; 
four men and a boy had taken him by main force; bound hand 
and foot he had been carried through the mountains to a lone- 
ly place; and there at day-break to-morrow he was to be shot. 
All this and more, with many details of place and circum- 
stance, Kerry had seen as in a flash of light, just as she was 
raking the ashes on the fire preparatory to going to bed. 

Mona had gone through too much to be within touch of the 
blind woman’s excitement. 

“We must not give way to these fancies, Kerry/’ she said. 

“ Fancies, mam? Fancies you’re saying? Scoffers may 
mock, but don’t you, mam — brought up with my own hand, 
as the saying is. ” 

“ I did not mean to mock, Kerry; but we have so many 
real troubles that it seems wicked to imagine others — and per- 
haps a little foolish, too.” 

At that word the sightless face of Kerry grew to a great 
gravity. 

“ Foolish, mam? It is the gift — the gift of the good God. 
He made me blind, but He gave me the sights. It would have 
been hard, and may be a taste cruel, to shut me up in the 
dark, and every living craythur in the light; but He is a just 
God and a merciful, as the saying is, and He gave me the gift 
for recompense. ” 

“ My good Kerry, I am so tired to-night, and must go to 

bed. ” 


THE DEEMSTER. 


235 


“ Aw, yes, and well it has sarved me time upon time — ” 

“We were up before six this morning, Kerry/ ’ 

“ And now I say to you, send immadient, mam, or the 
Lord help — ” 

The blind woman’s excitement and Mona’s impassibility 
were broken in upon by the sound of a man’s voice in the hall, 
asking sharply for the Deemster. At the next moment Quayle, 
the coroner, was in the room. His face was flushed, his breath 
came quick, and his manner betrayed extreme agitation. 

“ When the Deemster comes home from Kirk Andreas tell 
him to go across to Bishop’s Court at once, and say that I will 
be back before midnight.” 

So saying, the coroner wheeled about without ceremony, and 
was leaving the room. 

“ What has happened at Bishop’s Court?” Mona asked. 

“ Nothing,” he said, impatiently. 

“ Then why should I tell him to go there?” 

The tone of the question awakened the curmudgeon’s sense 
of common policy. 

“ Weil, if you must know, that man has escaped, and I’m 
thinking the bishop himself has had his foot in the mischief.” 

Then Kerry, with a confused desire to defend the bishop, 
interrupted, and said, “ The bishop’s not at the Coort — let 
me tell ye that. ” 

Whereupon the coroner smiled with a large dignity, and an- 
swered, “ I know it, woman.” 

“ When did this happen?” said Mona. 

“ Not an hour ago. I am straight from Peeltown this min- 
ute.” 

And without more words the coroner turned his back on her, 
and was gone in an instant. 

When Quayle had left the room Kerry lifted both hands; 
her blind face wore a curious expression of mingled pride and 
fear. “ It is the gift,” she said, in an awesome whisper. 

Mona stood awhile in silence and perplexity, and then she 
said, in tremulous voice: “ Kerry, don’t think me among those 
that scoff, but tell me over again, my good Kerry, and forgive 
me.” 

And Kerry told the story of her vision afresh, and Mona 
now listened with eager attention, and interrupted with fre- 
quent questions. 

“Who were the four men and the boy? Never saw their 
faces before? Never? Not in the street? No? Never heard 
their voices? Ah, surely you remember their voices? Yes, 
yes, try to recall them; try, try, my good Kerry. Ah! the 


23(5 


THE DEEMSTER. 


fishermen — they were the voices of the fishermen ! How were 
you so long in remembering? Quilleash? Yes, old Billy. 
And Crennel? Yes, and Teare and Corkell, and the boy Davy 
Fayle? Poor young Davy, he was one of them? Yes? Oh, 
you dear, good Kerry!” 

Mona's impassibility was gone, and her questions, like her 
breath, came hot and fast. 

“ And now tell me what place they took him to. The 
mountains? Yes, but where? Never saw the place before in 
all your life? Why, no, of course not; how could you, Kerry? 
Ah, don't mind what I say, and don't be angry. But what 
kind of place? Quick, Kerry, quick!” 

Kerry's blind face grew solemn, and one hand, with out- 
stretched finger, she raised before her, as though to trace the 
scene in the air, as she described the spot in the mountain^ 
where the four men and the boy had taken Dan. 

“ It was a great lone place, mam, with the sea a-both sides 
of you, and a great large mountain aback of you, and a small 
low one in front, and a deep strame running under you through 
the gorse, and another shallow one coming into it at a slant, 
and all whims and tussocks of the lush grass about, and may 
be a willow by the water's side, with the sally-buds hanging 
dead from the boughs, and never a stick, nor a sign of a house, 
nor a barn, but the ould tumbled cabin where they took him, 
and only the sea's roar afar away, and the sheep's bleating, 
and may be the mountain geese cackling, and all to that. ” 

Mona had listened at first with vivid eagerness and a face 
alive with animation, but as Kerry went on the girl's counte- 
nance saddened. She fell back a pace or two, and said, in a 
tone of pain and impatience: 

“ Oh, Kerry, you have told me nothing. What you say de- 
scribes nearly every mountain top in the island. Was there 
nothing else? Nothing? Think. Wliat about the tumble- 
down house? Had it a roof? Yes? No one living in it? No 
buildings about it? A shaft-head and gear? Oh, Kerry, how 
slow you are! Quick, dear Kerry! An old mine? A worked- 
out mine? Oh, think, and be sure!” 

Then the solemnity of the blind woman's face deepened to 
a look of inspiration. “ Think? No need to think,” she said, 
in an altered tone. “ Lord bless me, I see it again. There, 
there it is — there this very minute.” 

She sunk back into a chair, and suddenly became motion- 
less and stiff. Her sightless eyes were opened, and for the 
first few moments that followed thereafter all her senses 
seemed fo be lost to the things about her. In this dream- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


237 


state she continued to talk in a slow, broken, fearsome voice, 
exclaiming, protesting, and half sobbing. At first Mona 
looked on in an agony of suspense, and then she dropped to 
her knees at Kerry's feet, and flung her arms about the blind 
woman with the cry of a frightened bird. 

“ Kerry, Kerry!" she called, as if prompted by an uncon- 
scious impulse to recall her from the trance that was awful to 
look upon. And in that moment of contact with the seer she 
suffered a shock that penetrated every fiber; she shuddered, 
the cry of pain died off in her throat, her parted lips whitened 
and stiffened, her eyes were frozen in their look of terror, her 
breath ceased to come, her heart to beat, and body and soul 
together seemed transfixed. In that swift instant of insensi- 
bility the vision passed like a throb of blood to her from the 
blind woman, and she saw and knew all. 

Half an hour later, Mona, with every nerve vibrating, with 
eyes of frenzy and a voice of fear, was at Bishop's Court in- 
quiring for the bishop. 

“ He is this minute home from Peel," said the housekeeper. 

Mona was taken to the library, and there the bishop sat be- 
fore the fire, staring stupidly into the flame. His hat and 
cloak had not yet been removed, and a riding-whip hung from 
one of his listless hands. 

He rose as Mona entered. She flew to his arms, and while 
he held her to his breast his sad face softened, and the pent- 
up anguish of her heart overflowed in tears. Then she told 
him the tangled, inconsequent tale, the coroner's announce- 
ment, Kerry’s vision, her own strange dream-state, and all she 
had seen in it. 

As she spoke the bishop looked dazed; he pressed one hand 
on his forehead; he repeated her words after her; he echoed 
the questions she put to him. Then he lifted his head to be- 
token silence. “ Let me think," he said. But the brief 
silence brought no clearness to his bewildered brain. He could 
not think; he could not grasp what had occurred. And the 
baffled struggle to comprehend made the veins of his forehead 
stand out large and blue. A most pitiful look of weariness 
came over his mellow face, and he said, in a low tone that was 
very touching to hear, “ To tell you the truth, my dear child, 
I do not follow you — my mind seems thick and clouded — 
things run together in it — 1 am only a feeble old man now, 
and — But wait " (a flash of light crossed his troubled face); 
“ you say you recognize the place in the mountains?" 

“ Yes, as I saw it in the vision. I have been there before. 
When I was a child I was there with Dan and Ewan. It is far 


238 


THE DEEMSTER. 


up the Sulby river, under Snaefell, and over Glen Crammag. 
Don’t say it is foolish and womanish and only hysteria, dear 
uncle. I saw it all as plainly as I see you now.” 

44 Ah, no, my child. If the patriarch Joseph practiced such 
divination, is it for me to call it foolishness? But wait, wait, 
let me think.” And then, in a low murmur, as if communing 
with himself, he went on, 44 The door was left open . . . yes, 
the door . . . the door was ...” 

It was useless. His brain was broken, and would not link 
its ideas. He was struggling to piece together the fact that 
Dan was no longer in prison with the incidents of his own 
abandoned preparations for his son’s escape. Mumbling and 
stammering, he looked vacantly into Mona’s face, until the 
truth of his impotence forced itself upon her, and she saw that 
from him no help for Dan could come. 

Then with many tears she left him and hastened back to 
Ballamona. The house was in confusion; the Deemster and 
Jarvis Kerruish had returned, and the coroner was with them 
in the study. 

44 And what of the Peeltown watch?” the Deemster was 
asking sharply. 44 Where was he?” 

44 Away on some cock-and-bull errand, sir.” 

44 By whose orders?” 

44 The bishop’s.” 

44 And what of the harbor-master when the 4 Ben-my-Chree 9 
was taken away from her moorings?” 

44 He also was spirited away.” 

44 By whom?” 

44 The same messenger — Will-as-Thorn, the parish clerk.” 

44 Old Gorry, the sumner, gave up the prison keys to the 
bishop, you say?” 

44 To the bishop, sir.” 

44 And left him in the cell, and found the door open and the 
prisoner gone upon his return?” 

44 Just so, sir.” 

44 What have you been doing in the matter?” 

44 Been to Bamsey, sir, and stationed three men on the quay 
to see that nobody leaves the island by the Cumberland packet 
that sails at midnight.” 

44 Tut, man, who will need the packet? — the man has the 
fishing-boat.” 

Mona’s impatience could contain itself no longer. She hur- 
ried into the study and told her tale. The Deemster listened 
with a keen, quick sense; he questioned, cross-questioned, and 


THE DEEMSTER. 239 

learned all. This done he laughed a little, coldly and bitterly, 
and dismissed the whole story with contempt. 

“Kidnapped? No such matter. Escaped, woman, escaped ? 
And visions, forsooth! What peddler's French! Get away to 
bed, girl!" 

Mona had no choice but to go. Her agitation was painful; 
her sole thought was of Dan's peril. She was a woman, and 
that Dan was a doomed man whether in prison or out of it, 
whether he had escaped or been kidnapped, was a consideration 
that had faded from her view. His life was in imminent dan- 
ger, and that was everything to her. She had tried to save 
him by help of the bishop, and failing in that direction, she 
had attempted the same end by help of the Deemster, his 
enemy. 

The hours passed with feet of lead until three o'clock struck, 
and then there was a knock at her door. The Deemster's 
voice summoned her to rise, dress quickly and warmly, and 
come out immediately. She had not gone to bed, and in two 
minutes more was standing hooded and cloaked in the hall. 
The Deemster, Jarvis, the coroner, and seven men were there. 
At the porch a horse, saddled and bridled, was pawing the 
gravel. 

Mona understood everything at a glance. Clearly enough 
the Deemster intended to act on the guidance of the vision 
which he had affected to despise. Evidently it was meant that 
she should go with the men to identify the place she had de- 
scribed. 

“ An old lead mine under Snaefell and over Glen Crammag, 
d'you say?" 

“ Yes, father." 

“ Day-break?" 

66 It was day-break. " 

“ You would know the place if you saw it again?" 

“Yes." 

The Deemster turned to the coroner. 

“ Which course do you take?" 

“ Across Glen Dhoo, sir, past Kavensdale, and along the 
mountain path to the Sherragh Vane." 

“ Come, girl, mount; be quick." 

Mona was lifted to the saddle, the coroner took the bridle, 
and they started away, the seven men walking behind. 


uo 


THE DEEMSTER. 


CHAPTER XXXLLL 

KIDNAPPED. 

What had happened was a strange series of coincidences. 
Early that day the crew of the “ Ben-my-Chree,” in the 
mountain solitude where they found freezing and starving 
safety, had sent one of their number back to Sulby village to 
buy a quarter of meal. Teare was the man chosen for the 
errand, and, having compassed it, he was stealing his way back 
to the mountains when he noticed that great companies of 
people were coming from the direction of Ramsey. Lagging 
behind the larger groups on the road was a woman whom he 
recognized as his wife. He attracted her attention without re- 
vealing himself to the people in front. She was returning 
from the Deemster’s inquest, and told what had occurred 
there; that Dan, the bishop’s son, had surrendered, and that 
the indictment to the Court of General Jail Delivery had been 
made out not only in his name, but in the names of the four 
men and the boy of the “ Ben-my-Chree. ” 

Teare carried back to the mountains a heavier burden than 
the quarter of meal. His mates had watched for him as he 
plodded up the bank of the Sulby river, with the bag on his 
back. When he came up his face was ominous. 

4 4 Send the lad away for a spell,” he muttered to old Billy 
Quilleash, and Davy Fayle was sent to cut gorse for a fire. 

Then the men gathered around Teare and heard what had 
happened. The disaster had fallen which they foresaw. 
What was to be doner Crennel, with a line from a psalm, 
was for trusting in the Lord; and old Quilleash, with an oath, 
was for trusting in his heels. After a pause Teare propounded 
his scheme. It centered in Dan. Dan with his confession was 
their sole danger. Once rid of Dan they were as free men. 
Before his confession of guilt their innocence was beyond his 
power to prove or their power to establish. On his way up 
from the valley Teare had hit on a daring adventure. They 
were to break into the castle at Peel, take Dan by force, bring 
him up to the mountains, and there give him the choice of 
life or death; life if he promised to plead not guilty to the in- 
dictment, death if he adhered to the resolution by which he 
had surrendered. 

The men gathered closer about Teare, and with yet whiter 
faces. Teare gave his plan; his scheme was complete; that 


THE DEEMSTER. 


241 


night they were to carry it out. Paton Gorry was the jailer 
at Peel Castle. The lad Davy was the old sumner's godchild. 
Davy was to go forth and smuggle Gorry's keys out of the 
guard-room. If that were found impossible — well, Paton was 
an old man; he might be put quietly out of harm's way — no 
violence — och! no, not a ha'p’orth. Then Corkell was son- 
in-law of the watch at Peeltown, and hence the watch must 
take the harbor-master to the Jolly Herrings, in Castle Street, 
while they themselves, Teare, Quilleash, Crennel, and Cor- 
kell, took the 44 Ben-my-Chree " from her moorings at the 
mouth of the harbor. On the west coast of St. Patrick's Isle 
they must bear down and run the dingy ashore. Then Dan 
must be seized in his cell, bound hand and foot, and brought 
aboard. With a fair wind — it was blowing east-sou '-east — they 
must set sail for Ramsey Bay, put about at Lague, anchor 
there, and go ashore. 44 That'll lave it," said Teare, 44 to 
raisonable inf'rence that Mastlia Dan had whipped off to Eng- 
land by the Whitehaven packet that sails at midnight from 
the quay." 

This done they were to find a horse, strap the fettered man 
to its back, fetch him into the mountains in the dark hours of 
the night, and at day-break try him solemnly and justly on the 
issue they had hit upon of life or death. No violence! Aw, 
no, all just and straight! If so be that the man was hanging 
them, they'd do him j ustice man to man as fair as the back- 
bone lies down the middle of a herring. Deemster's justice 
couldn't be cleaner; no, nor as clean. Aw, yes, no vio- 
lence! 

It was an intricate plan, involving many risks, presupposing 
many favorable chances. Perhaps it was not a logical com- 
putation of probabilities. But, good or bad, logical or illog- 
ical, probable or improbable, easy of accomplishment or full of 
risk and peril, it was the only alternative to trusting in the 
Lord, as Crennel had suggested, or in their heels, as Quilleash 
had preferred. In the end they took it, and made ready to 
act on it. 

As the men arrived at their conclusion Davy Fayle was re- 
turning with an armful of withered gorse for a fire. The first 
move in that night's adventure was to be made by him. 
44 Lave the lad to me," whispered Quilleash, and straightway 
he tackled Davy. Veracity was not conspicuous in the ex- 
planation that the old salt made. Poor Mastha Dan had been 
nabbed, bad sess to it, and jiggered up in Peel Castle. He 
would be hanged sarten sure. Aw, safe for it, if some chaps 
didn't make an effort immadient. They meant to do it, too. 


242 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Ay, that very eyenin! Wouldn't they let him help? Well, 
pozzible, pozzible. They wasn’t no objection to that. Thus 
Davy fell an eager victim to a plan that was not propounded 
to him. If saviug Mastha Dan from the dirts that had nabbed 
him was the skame that was goin’, why nothin’ would hould 
him but he would be in it. “Be aisy with the loblolly boy 
and you have him, ” whispered old Billy behind the back of 
his hand, as he spat a long jet from his quid. 

Believed of doubt as to their course of action, they built a 
fire and warmed themselves, and with water from the river 
below they made cold porridge of the meal, and eat and drank, 
and waited for the night. The darkness came early, it was 
closing in at four o’clock. Then the men smothered their fire 
with turf and earth and set out for Peeltown. Their course 
was over Colden, and between Greeba and Beary, to the breast 
of Slieu Whallin, and then down to St. Patrick’s Isle by the 
foot of Corrin’s Hill. It was twelve miles over hill and dale, 
through the darkness and the muggy air of the winter’s night. 
They had to avoid the few houses and to break their pace when 
footsteps came their way. But they covered the distance in 
less than four hours. At eight o’clock they were standing to- 
gether on the south of the bridge that crosses the Neb river at 
the top of Peel Harbor. There they separated. Corkell went 
off to the market-place by a crooked alley from the quay to 
find the watch, and dispose of him. When the harbor-master 
had been removed, Corkell was to go to the “ Ben-my-Chree, ” 
which was moored in deep water at the end of the wooden pier, 
open the scuttle on the south, and put the lamp to it as a sig- 
nal of safety to Quilleash, Teare, and Crennel above the 
bridge on the headland opposite. They were then to come 
aboard. Davy Fayle took the south quay to St. Patrick’s Isle. 
It was now the bottom of the ebb tide, and Davy was to wade 
the narrow neck that divided the isle from the mainland. 
Perhaps he might light on a boat; perhaps cross dry-shod. In 
half an hour he was to be on the west of the castle, just under 
a spot known as the Giant’s Grave, and there the four men 
were to come ashore to him in the dingy. Meantime he was 
to see old Paton Gorry and generally take the soundings. 

Thus they parted. 

Davy found the water low and the ford dry. He crossed it 
as noiselessly as he could, and reached the rocks of the isle. 
It was not so dark but he could descry the dim outlines of the 
ruined castle. A flight of steps ascended from the water’s 
edge to the portcullis. Davy crept up. He had prepared to 
knock at the old notched door under the arch, but he found it 


THE DEEMSTER. 


243 


standing open. He stood and listened. At one moment he 
thought he heard a movement behind him. It was darkest of 
all under these thick walls. He went on; he passed the door- 
way that is terrible with the tradition of the Moddey Dhoo. 
As he went by the door he turned his head to it in the dark- 
ness, and once again he thought he heard something stir. 
This time the sound came from before him. He gasped, and 
had almost screamed. He stretched his arms toward the 
sound. There was nothing. All was still once more. 

Davy stepped forward into the court-yard. His feet fell 
softly on the grass that grew there. At length he reached 
the guard-room. Once more he had lifted his hand to knock, 
and once more he found the door open. He looked into the 
room. It was empty; a fire burned on the hearth, a form 
was drawn up in front of it; a pipe lay on a bare deal table. 
“ He has gone down to the cell,” Davy told himself, and he 
made his way to the steps that led to the dungeon. But he 
stopped again, and his heart seemed to stand still. There 
could now be no doubt but some one was approaching. There 
was the faint jingle as of keys. “ Paton! Paton!” Davy 
called fearfully. There was no answer, but the footsteps came 
on. “ Who is there?” he cried again, in a tremulous whis- 
per. At the next instant a man passed in the darkness, and 
Davy saw and knew him. It was the bishop. 

Davy dropped to his knees. A moment afterward the bish- 
op was gone through the outer gate and down the steps. His 
footsteps ceased, and then there were voices, followed by the 
plash of an oar, and then all was silence once more, save for 
the thick boom of the sea that came up from the rocks. 

Davy rose to his feet and turned toward the steps that led 
down to the door of the dungeon. A light came from below. 
The door was open also, and stretching himself full length on 
to the ground Davy could see into the cell. On the floor there 
was a lantern, and beside it a bundle lay. Dan was there; he 
was lying on the stone couch; he was alone. 

Breathless and trembling Davy rose again and fled out of 
the old castle and along the rocky causeway to a gullet under 
the Giant's Grave. There the men were waiting for him. 

“ The place is bewitched,” he said, with quick-coming 
breath; and he told how every door was open, and not a soul 
was in the castle except Dan. The men heard him with evi- 
dent terror. Corkell had just told them a similar story. The 
watch and the harbor-master had both been removed before 
he had gone in search of them. Everything seemed to be 
done to their hands. Nothing was left to them to do but sim- 


2U 


THE DEEMSTER. 


ply to walk into the castle and carry out their design. This 
terrified them. “ It’s a fate,” Corkell whispered; and Cren- 
nel, in white awe of the unseen hand that was helping them, 
was still for trusting in the Lord. Thus they put their heads 
together. Quilleash was first to recover from superstitious 
fears. “ Come, lay down, and no blather,” he said, and 
stalked resolutely forward, carrying a sack and a coil of rope. 
The other men followed him in silence. Davy was ordered to 
stay behind with the small boat. 

They found everything as the lad had left it; the notched 
door of the portcullis was open, the door of the guard-room 
was open, and when they came to the steps of the dungeon 
the door there was also open. A moment they stood and list- 
ened, and heard no sound from below but a light, regular 
breathing, as of one man only. Then they went quietly down 
the steps and into the cell. Dan was asleep. At sight of 
him, lying alone and unconscious, their courage wavered a 
moment. The unseen hand seemed to be on them still. “ I 
tell thee it’s a fate,” Corkell whispered again over Quilleash's 
shoulder. In half a minute the sleeping man was bound hand 
and foot, and the sack was thrown over his head. At the first 
touch he awoke and tried to rise, but four men were over his 
prostrate body, and they overpowered him. He cried lustily, 
but there was none to hear. In less time than it takes to tell 
it the men were carrying Dan out of the cell. The lantern 
they left on the floor, and in their excitement they did not 
heed the parcel that lay by it. 

Over the court-yard, through the gate, along the ledge un- 
der the crumbling walls they stumbled and plunged in the 
darkness. They reached the boat and pushed off. Ten min- 
utes afterward they were aboard the “ Ben-my-Chree,” and 
were beating down the bay. 

Dan recognized the voices of the men, and realized his situa- 
tion. He did not shout again. The sack over his head was 
of coarse fiber, admitting the air, and he could breathe through 
it without difficulty. He had been put to lie on one of the 
bunks in the cabin, and he could see the tossing light of the 
horn lantern that hung from the deck planks. When the 
boat rolled in the strong sea that was running he could some- 
times see the lights on the land through the open scuttle. 

With a fair wind for the Point of Ayr, full sail was 
retched. Corkell stood to the tiller, and, when all went 
smoothly, the three men turned in below, and lighted a fire in 
the stove, and smoked. Then Davy Fayle came down with 
eyes dull and sick. He had begun to doubt, and to ask ques- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


245 


tions that the men coaid not answer. What for was Mastha 
Dan tied up like a haythen? And what for the sack? But 
the men were in no humor for cross-examination. No criss- 
crossing! The imperent young idiot waistrel, let him keep his 
breath to cool his porridge. To quiet the lad the men plied 
him with liquor, and at the second draught he was reeling 
drunk. Then he laughed a wild laugh, and sung a mad song, 
and finally stood up to dance. It was a grim sight, but it was 
soon ended, and Davy was put to sleep in another of the bunks. 
Then two hours passed, and there was some growling and 
quarreling. 

Crennel and Teare went up on deck. Quilleash remained 
below, sitting before the stove cleaning with oil and a rag a 
fowling-piece that Dan had brought aboard at the beginning 
of the herring season. Sometimes he crooned a Manx carval, 
and sometimes whistled it, as he worked, chewing his quid 
meantime, and glancing at intervals at Dan's motionless fig- 
ure on the bunk: 


“ With pain we record 
The year of our Lord, 

Sixteen hundred and sixty and sayven, 

When it so come to pass 
A good fishing there wass 
Off Dooglas, and a wonderful sayson.” 

There was no other sound in the cabin, except Davy's heavy 
breathing, and the monotonous beat of the water at the boat's 
bow. Dan lay as quiet as the dead. Never once had he 
spoken or been spoken to. 

The boat was flying before the wind. The sky had cleared, 
and the stars were out, and the lights on the shore could be 
plainly seen. Orrisdale, Jurby, and the Rue went by, and 
when Bishop's Court was passed the light in the library win- 
dow burned clear and strong over the sea. Toward ten o'clock 
the light-house on the Point of Ayr was rounded, and then 
the boat had to bear down the Ramsey Bay in tacks. Before 
eleven they were passing the town, and could see the lights of 
the Cumberland packet as she lay by the quay. It was then 
three-quarter tide. In half an hour more the lugger was put 
about at Port Lague, and there Dan was taken ashore by 
Teare and Crennel. Quilleash went with them, carrying the 
fowling-piece. 

Corkell and Davy Fayle, who had recovered from his stupor, 
were to take the “ Ben-my-Chree " back into Ramsey Bay, to 
drop anchor under Baliure, and then to rejoin their com- 
panions at Lague before twelve o'clock. This was to divert 


246 


THE DEEMSTER. 


suspicion, and to provoke the inference, when the fishing-boat 
would be found next morning, that Dan had escaped to Eng- 
land by the Whitehaven packet. 

The “ Ben-my-Chree ” sailed olf with Corkell and Davy. 
Teare went in search of a horse, Quilleash and Crennel re- 
mained on the shore at Lague with Dan. It was a bleak and 
desolate place, with nothing to the south but the grim rocks 
of the Table-land Head, and with never a house to the north 
nearer than Eolieu, which was half a mile away. The night 
was now bitterly cold. The stars were gone, the darkness was 
heavy, and a nipping frost was in the dense atmosphere. But 
the wind had dropped, and every sound sent a dull echo 
through the air. The two men waited and listened. Thus 
far all had gone well with them, but what remained to do was 
perilous enough. If Corkell and the lad happened to be seen 
when coming from the boat, if Teare were caught in the act of 
borrowing a horse without leave, then all would be over with 
them. Their suspense was keen. 

Presently there came up to them from the bay, over the 
dull rumble of the waves on the shore, a quick creaking 
sound, followed by a splash and then a dead roll. They knew 
it was the anchor being slipped to its berth. Soon afterward 
there came from the land to the south the sharp yap of dogs, 
followed at a short interval by the heavy beat of a horse’s 
hoofs on the road. Was it Teare with the horse? Was he 
pursued? The men listened, but could hear no other noise. 
Then there came through the dense air the m uffled sound of a 
bell ringing at the quay. It was the first of three bells that 
were rung on the Cumberland packet immediately before it 
set sail. 

The horse behind drew nearer, the bell in front rang again. 
Then Teare came up leading a big draught mare by the 
bridle. He had been forced to take it from the stable at 
Lague, and in getting it away he had aroused the dogs; but he 
had not been followed, and all was safe. The bell rang a third 
time, and immediately a red light crept out from the quay 
toward the sea, which lay black as a raven below. The Cum- 
berland packet had gone. 

At that moment Corkell and Davy Fayle returned, Corkell 
holding Davy by the neck of his guernsey. The lad had begun 
to give signs of a mutinous spirit, which the man had sup- 
pressed by force. Davy’s eyes flashed, but he was otherwise 
quiet and calm. 

“ What for is all this, you young devil?” said Quilleash. 
“What d’ye mean? Out with it, quick! what tricks now? 


THE DEEMSTER. 247 

1) — n his fool's face, what for does he look at me like 
that?” 

“ Dowse hat, Billy, and bear a hand and be quiet,” said 
Crennel. 

“ The young pauper's got the imperence of sin,” said 
Quilleash. 

Then the men lifted Dan on to the back of the big mare, 
and strapped him with his covered face to the sky. Never a 
word was spoken to him, and never a word did he speak. 

“ Let's make a slant for it,” said Teare, and he took the 
bridle. Corkell and Crennel walked on either side of the 
horse. Quilleash walked behind, carrying the fowling-piece 
over his left shoulder. Davy was at his right hand. 

The journey thereafter was long and heavy. They took the 
path that is to the north by Barrule and Clag Ouyre, and runs 
above Glen Auldyn and winds round to the south of Snaefell. 
Ten miles they plodded on in the thick darkness and the cold, 
with only the rumbling rivers for company, and with the 
hidden mountains making unseen ghosts about them. On 
they went, with the horse between them taking its steady 
stride that never varied and never failed, even when the rivers 
crossed the path and their own feet stumbled into ruts. On 
and on, hour after hour, until their weary limbs dragged after 
them, and their gossip ceased, and even their growling and 
quarreling was no more heard. Then on and still on in the 
grewsome silence. 

Under the breast of Snaefell they came into the snow of 
two days ago, which had disappeared in the valleys but still 
lay on the mountains, and was now crisp under their feet. It 
seemed, as they looked down in the darkness, to pass beneath 
them like short smoky vapor that dazed the eyes and made the 
head giddy. Still higher the sound of running waters sud- 
denly stopped, for the rivers were frozen and their voices 
silenced. But the wind blew more strongly as they ascended 
the chill heights. 

Sometimes at the top of a long raise they stopped to breathe 
the horse, and then, with no sound above or around except 
the shrill sough of the wind in the gorse, their courage began 
to fail. Ghostly imaginings would not be kept down. 

“ Did you ever hear the Lockman?” said Crennel beneath 
his breath. 

“ I never come agen him,” said Quilleash. “ When I see 
anything at night on the mountains I allis lave it alone.” 

The other men shuddered, and forthwith began to whistle 
right lustily. 


THE DEEMSTERc 


248 

Sometimes they passed a mountain sheep-pen, and the sheej: 
being disturbed would bleat. Sometimes a dog at a distant 
house would hear them and bark; and even that, though it 
was a signal of danger, was also a sort of human companion- 
ship on the grim mountain-side. 

It was a dreary walk, and to Dan, bound hand and foot on 
.he horse, it was a painful ride — a cold one it could not be, for 
the awkward motion brought warmth. The night wore on, 
and the air grew keener; the men’s beards became crisp with 
the frost. 

At length the silent company rounded Snaefell to the north 
of Cronk-y-Vane and Beinn-y-Phott. Then Teare at the 
horse’s head twisted about. “Do we take the ould mine 
shed for it?” he asked. 

“ Ay,” said Quilleash. 

Their journey was almost ended. The sky over the sea be- 
hind them was then dabbled with gray, and a smell of dawn 
was coming down from the mountains. 


CHAPTER XXXIY. 

A RUDE TRIBUNAL. 

The course taken by the coroner and his seven men, with 
Mona on the horse, came to a triangle of mountain paths 
above a farm known as the Sherragh Vane. One path wound 
close under the west foot of Snaefell, another followed the bed 
of the river that ran through a glen called Crammag, and the 
third joined these two by crossing the breast of Beinn-y-Phott. 
At the acute angle of the Sherragh Vane the coroner drew up. 

“ Can any one see the lead shaft?” he asked. None could 
see it. The darkness had lifted away, and the crown of 
Snaefell was bare against the sky, like an islet of green float- 
-ng over a cloud of vapor. But the mists still lay thick on the 
moorlands, and even the high glens were obscure. 

“ It must be yonder, about a mile and a half up the river,” 
said the coroner. 

The lead mine was in the south-east angle of the triangle of 

E aths, under the south-west of Snaefell and the north of 
teinn-y-Phott. For some minutes the company was at a 
stand while the coroner considered their movements. 

Mona’s impatience was manifest. “ Let us push on,” she 
said. 

The coroner merely eyed her largely and resumed his de« 
liberations. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


249 

“Oh! how we waste our time,” she said again. “ If the 
lead mine is there, what have we to do but reach it?” 

The coroner with an insolent smile inquired if the lady felt 
the cold. 

“ He is in danger for his life, and here we waste the precious 
minutes in idle talk,” she answered. 

“ Danger for his life,” the coroner echoed, and laughed 
coldly. Then in a tone of large meaning he added, “ Possible, 
possible,” and smiled at his own subtle thought. 

Mona’s anxiety mastered her indignation. 

“ Look, the mist is lifting. See, there is the shed-— there in 
the gap between the hills, and it is the very place I saw. 
Come, make haste — look, it is daylight. ” 

“ Be aisy, be aisy. If they’re in yonder shed, they are 
packed as safe as herrings in a barrel,” said the coroner. 

Then he divided his forces. Three men he sent down the 
path of the Glen Crammag. Two he left where they then 
stood to guard that outlet to the curraghs of the north and 
west. Two others were to creep along the path under Snae- 
fell, and shut out the course to the sea and the lowlands on 
the south and east. He himself would walk straight up to the 
shed, and his seven men, as they saw him approach it, were to 
close quickly in from the three corners of the triangle. 

“ Is it smoke that’s rising above the shed? A lire? Possi- 
ble. He thinks he’s safe. I’ll go bail. Oeh! yes, and may be 
and drinking and making aisy. Now, men, away with 


Within the shed itself at that moment there was as grim a 
scene as the eye of man has yet looked upon. The place was 
a large square building of two rooms, one on the ground level 
and the other above it, the loft being entered by a trap in the 
floor with a wooden ladder down the wall. It had once served 
as gear-shed and office, stable and store, but now it was bare 
and empty. In the wall looking east there was a broad open- 
ing without door, and in the wall looking north a narrow 
opening without window. 

To a hasp in the jamb of the door-way the big mare was 
tethered, and in the draught between the two openings the lad 
Davy with wandering mind was kindling a fire of gorse over 
two stones. The smoke filled the place, and through its dense 
volumes in the dusk of that vaporous dawn the faces of the 
men were bleared and green and haggard. The four fisher- 
men stood in a group together, with old Quilleash a pace to 
the fore, the fowling-piece in his hand, its butt on the ground. 



250 


THE DEEMSTEB. 


Before him and facing him, two paces in front, stood Dan, his 
arms still bound to his sides, his head uncovered, and his legs 
free. There was a gaunt earnestness in every face. 

“ Listen to me/' said old Quilleash. “ We're going to 
judge and jury you, but all fair and square as God is above 
us, and doing nothing that we can't answer for when the big 
day comes and every man has to toe his mark. D'ye hear 
what we're saying, sir?" 

Dan moved his head slightly by way of assent. 

“We've trapped you, it's true, and fetched you by force, 
that's sartin; but we mean to be just by you, and no violence; 
and it's spakin’ the truth we're going to do, and never a word 
of a lie." 

The other men muttered “ Ay, ay;" and Quilleash went 
on: “ We're chaps what believes in a friend, and buckin' up 
for them as bucks up for you, and being middlin' stanch, 
and all to that; but we're after doing it once too often." 

“ So we are," said Orennel, and the others muttered again 
“ Ay, ay." 

Quilleash spat behind his hand and continued: “ The long 
and short of it is that you're goin' middlin' straight for hang- 
ing us, and it isn't natheral as we're to stand by and see it 
done. " 

Dan lifted his face from the ground. “ 1 meant to do you 
no harm, my good fellows," he said, quickly. 

“ Meaning's meaning, but doing’s doing, and we've heard 
all that's going," said Quilleash. “ You've surrendered and 
confessed, and the presentment is agen us all, and what's in 
for you is in for us. " 

“ But you are innocent men. What need you fear?" 

“ Innocent we be, but where the Deemster comes there's 
not a ha'p'orth to choose between you and us." 

Dan's face flushed, and he answered warmly: “ Men, don't 
let your miserable fears make cowards of you. What have 
you done? Nothing. You are innoecnt. Yet how are you 
bearing yourself? Like guilty men. If I were innocent do 
you think I would skulk away in the mountains?" 

“ Aisy, sir, take it aisy. May be you'd rather run like a 
rat into a trap. Cowards? Well, pozzible, pozzible. There's 
nothing like having a wife and a few childers for making a 
brave chap into a bit of a skunk. But we'll lave < cowards ' 
alone if you plaze. " 

Quilleash made a dignified sweep of the back of his hand, 
while the other men said, “ Better, better." 

“ Why have you brought me here?" said Dan. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


251 


“ There isn't a living sowl knows where you are, and when 
they find you're missing at the castle they’ll say you’ve thought 
better of it and escaped.” 

“Why have you brought me here?” Dan repeated. 

“ The Whitehaven boat left Bamsey after we dropped 
anchor in the bay last night, and they’ll say you’ve gone off 
to England.” 

“ Tell me why you have brought me to this place.” 

“We are alone and can do anything we like with you, and 
nobody a ha’p’orth the wiser. ” 

“ What do you mean to do?” 

Then they told him of the alternative of life or death. 
There was nothing against him but his own confession. If he 
but held his tongue there was not enough evidence to hang a 
cat. Let him only promise to plead “ Not guilty ” when the 
trial came on, and they were ready to go back with him and 
stand beside him. If not — 

“ What then?” Dan asked. 

“ Then we’ll be forced — ” said Quilleash, and he stopped. 

“ Well?” 

“ I’m saying we’ll be forced — ” Here he stopped again. 

“ Out with it, man alive,” Teare broke in— “ forced to 
shoot him like a dog.” 

“ Well, that’s only spakin’ the truth any way,” said Quil- 
leash, quietly. 

Davy Fayle leaped up from the fire with a cry of horror. 
But Dan was calm and resolute. 

“ Men, you don’t know what you’re asking. I can not do 
it.” 

“ Aisy, sir, aisy, and think agen. You see we’re in if you’re 
in, and who’s to know who’s deepest?” 

“ God knows it, and He will never allow you to suffer. ” 

“We’ve childers and wives looking to us, and who can tell 
how they’d fend in the world if we were gone?” 

“ You’re brave fellows, and I’m sorry for the name I gave 
you. ” 

“ Shoo! Lave that alone. May be we spoke back. Let’s 
come to the fac’s.” 

They stated their case again and with calm deliberation. 
He asked how it could mend their case if his life was taken. 
They answered him that they would go back and surrender, 
and stand their trial and be acquitted. Those four men were 
as solemn a tribunal as ever a man stood before for life or 
death. Not a touch of passion, hardly a touch of warmth, 
disturbed their rude sense of justice. 


252 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ "We're innocent, but we're in it, and if you stand to it we 
must stand to it, and what's the use of throwing your life 
away?" 

Dan looked into their haggard faces without wavering. He 
had gone too far to go back now. But he was deeply moved. 

“ Men," he said, “ I wish to God I could do what you ask, 
but 1 can not, and, besides, the Almighty will not let any 
harm come to you." 

There was a pause, and then old Quilleash said with quiet 
gravity, “ I'm for religion myself, and singing hymns at 
whiles, and may be a bit of a spell at the ould Book, but 

when it comes to trusting for life, d d if I don't look for 

summat substantial. " 

As little was their stubborn purpose to be disturbed by 
spiritual faith as Dan's resolution was to be shaken by bodily 
terrors. They gave him as long to decide as it took a man to 
tell a hundred. The counting was done by Teare amid dead 
silence of the others. 

Then it was that, thinking rapidly, Dan saw the whole 
terrible issue. His mind went back to the visit of the bishop 
to the castle, and to the secret preparations that had been 
made for his own escape. He remembered that the sumner 
had delivered up his keys to the bishop, and that the bishop 
had left the door of the cell open. In a quick glance at the 
facts he saw but too plainly that if he never returned to take 
his trial it would be the same to his father as if he had ac- 
cepted the means of escape that had been offered him. The 
bishop, “guilty in purpose, but innocent in fact, would then be 
the slave of any scoundrel who could learn of his design. 
Though his father had abandoned his purpose, he would seem 
to have pursued it, and the people whom he had bribed to 
help him would but think that he had used other instruments. 
There could be only one explanation of his absence — that he 
escaped; only one means of escape— the bishop; only one way 
of saving the bishop from unmerited and life-long obloquy— 
returning to his trial; and only one condition of going back 
alive — promising to plead “Not guilty " to the charge of 
causing the death of Ewan. 

It was an awful conflict of good passions with passions that 
were not bad. At one moment the sophistry took hold of him 
that, as his promise was being extorted by bodily threats, it 
could not be binding on his honor; that he might give the 
men the word they wanted, go back to save his father, and 
finally act at the trial as he knew to be best. But at the next 
moment in his mind's eye he saw himself in the prisoner's 


THE DEEMSTER. 


253 

dock by the side of these five brave fellows, all standing for 
their lives, all calmly trusting in his promise, and he heard 
himself giving the plea that might send them to their deaths. 
Better any consequences than such treachery. Truth it must 
be at all costs: truth to them and to himself. And as for the 
bishop, when did the Almighty ask for such poor help as the 
lie of a blood-stained cirminal to save the honor of a man of 
God? 

It was a terrible crisis of emotion, but it was brief. The 
counting ended, and Quilleash called for the answer. 

“ No, I can not do it — God forgive me, I wish I could," 
said Dan, in a burst of impatience. 

It was said. The men made no reply to it. There was 
awful quiet among them. They began to cast lots. Five 
copper coins of equal size, one of them marked with a crosh, 
scratched with the point of a nail, they put into the bag. 
One after one they dipped a hand and drew out a coin, and 
every man kept his fist clinched till all had drawn. The lad 
was not for joining, but the men threatened him, and he 
yielded. Then all hands were opened together. 

The lot had fallen to Davy Fayle. AYhen he saw this, his 
simple face whitened visibly and his lip lagged very low. Old 
Quilleash handed him the gun, and he took it in a listless way, 
scarcely conscious of what was intended, 

“ What's goin’ doing?" he asked, vacantly. 

The men told him that it was for him to do it. 

“ Do what?" he asked, dazed and stupid. 

Shamefully, and with a touch of braggadocio, they told 
what he had to do, and then his vacant face became suddenly 
charged with passion, and he made a shriek of terror and let 
the gun fall. Quilleash picked the gun from the ground and 
thrust it back into Davy's hand. 

“ You've got to do it," he said; “ the lot's fallen to yom 
and it's bad work flying in the face of fate." 

At first Davy cried that nothing on God's earth would make 
him do it; but suddenly he yielded, took the gun quickly, and 
was led to his place three or four paces in front of where Dan 
stood with his arms bound at his sides, his face of an ashy 
whiteness and his eyes fearful to look upon. 

“ I can't kill him while he's tied up like that," said Davy. 
“ Loose him, and then I'll shoot. " 

The men had been startled by Davy's sudden acquiescence, 
but now they understood it. Not by so obvious a ruse were 
they to be deceived. They knew full well that Dan as a free 
man was a match for all four of them unarmed. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


£54 

“ You're meaning to fire over his head,” they said to Davy; 
and carried away by his excitement, and without art to conceal 
his intention, the lad cried hysterically, “ That's the truth, 
and so I am. ” 

The men put their heads together, and there was some 
hurried whispering. At the next minute they had laid hold 
of Davy, bound him as Dan was bound, and put him to stand 
at Dan's side. This they did with the thought that Davy was 
now Dan's accomplice. 

Then again they cast lots as before. This time the lot fell 
to Quilleash. He took his stand where the lad had stood, and 
put the trigger of the gun at cock. 

“ Men,'' he said, “if we don't take this man's life nothing 
<vill hould him but he'll take ours; and it's our right to pro- 
ject ourselves, and the ould Book will uphold us. It isn't 
murder we're at, but justice, and Lord A'mighty ha' massy 
on their sowls!” 

“ Give him another chance,” said Teare, and Quilleash 
nothing loath, put his question again. Dan, with a glance at 
Davy, answered as before, with as calm a voice, though his 
face was blanched and his eyes stood out from their sockets, 
and his lips and nostrils quivered. 

Then there was silence, and then down on their knees be- 
hind Quilleash fell the three men, Crennel, Corkell, and 
Teare. “ Lord ha' massy on their sowls!” they echoed, and 
Quilleash raised the gun. 

Never a word more did Dan say, and never a cry or a sign 
came from Davy Fayle. But Quilleash did not fire. He 
paused and listened, and turning about he said in an altered 
tone, “ Where's the horse?” 

The men lifted their heads and pointed, without speaking, 
to where the horse was tethered by the door-way. Quille.ash 
listened with head aslant. “ Then who's foot is that?” he 
said. 

The men leaped to their feet. Teare was at the door-way in 
an instant. “ God A'mighty, they're on us!” he said in an 
affrighted whisper. 

Then two of the others looked, and saw that from every side 
the coroner and his men were closing in upon them. They 
could recognize every man, though the nearest was still half a 
mile away. For a moment they stared blankly into each 
other's faces and asked themselves what was to be done. In 
that moment every good and bad quality seemed to leap to 
their faces. Corkell and Crennel, seeing themselves out- 
numbered, fell to a bout of hysterical weeping. Teare. a 


THE DEEMSTER. 


255 


fellow of sterner stuff, without pity or ruth, seeing no clanger 
for them if Dan were out of sight, was for finishing in a twink- 
ling what they had begun — shooting Dan, flinging him into 
the loft above, down the shaft outside, or into a manure-hole 
at the door- way, that was full of slimy filth and was now half 
frozen over. 

Quilleash alone kept his head, and when Teare had spoken 
the old man said. No, and set his lip firm and hard. Then 
Dan himself, no less excited than the men themselves, called 
and asked how many they were that were coming. Orennel 
told him nine — seven men and the coroner, and another — it 
might be a woman — on a horse. 

“ Eight men are not enough to take six of us,” said Dan. 
* * Here, cut my rope and Davy’s — quick. ” 

When the men heard that, and saw by the light of Dan’s 
eyes that he meant it, and that he whose blood they had all 
but spilled was ready to stand side by side with them and 
throw in his lot with their lot, they looked stupidly into each 
other’s eyes, and could say nothing. But in another breath 
the evil spirit qf doubt had taken hold of them, and Teare was 
laughing bitterly in Dan’s face. 

Orennel looked out at the door- way again. “ They’re run- 
ning, we’re lost men,” he said; and once more he set up his 
hysterical weeping. 

“ Dowse that,” said Quilleash; “ where’s your trustin’ 
now?” 

“ Here, Billy,” said Dan, eagerly, “ cut the lad’s rope and 
get into the loft, every man of you.” 

Without waiting to comprehend the meaning of this advice, 
realizing nothing but that the shed was surrounded and escape 
impossible, two of them, Orennel and Corkell, clambered up 
the ladder to the loft. Old Quilleash, who from the first mo- 
ment of the scare had not budged an inch from his place on 
the floor, stood there still with the gun in his hand. Then 
Dan, thinking to free himself by burning one strand of the 
rope that bound him, threw himself down on his knees by the 
fire of gorse and wood, and held himself over it until one 
shoulder and arm and part of his breast were in the flame. 
For a moment it seemed as if, bound as he was, he must 
thrust half his body into the fire, and roll in it, before the rope 
that tied him would ignite. But at the next moment he had 
leaped to his feet with a mighty effort, and the rope was burn- 
ing over his arm. 

At that same moment the coroner and the seven men, with 
Mona riding behind them, came up to the door- way of the 


256 


THE DEEMSTER. 


shed. There they drew up in consternation. No sight on 
earth was less like that they had looked to see than the sight 
they then beheld. 

There, in a dense cloud of smoke, was Davy Fayle, still 
bound and helpless, pale and speechless with affright; and 
there was Dan, also bound, and burning over one shoulder as 
if the arm itself were afire, and straining his great muscles to 
break the rope that held him. Quilleash was in the middle of 
the floor as if rooted to the spot, and his gun was in his hands. 
Teare was on the first rung of the wall-ladder, and the two 
white faces of Corkell and Crennel were peering down from 
the trap-hole above. 

“ What's all this?" said the coroner. 

Then Teare dropped back from the ladder and pointed at 
Dan and said, “ We caught him and were taking him back to 
you, sir. Look, that’s the way we strapped him. But he was 
trying to burn the rope and give us the slip." 

Dan’s face turned black at that word of treachery, and a 
hoarse cry came from his throat. 

“Is it true?" said the coroner, and his lip curled as he 
turned to Dan. Davy Fayle shouted vehemently that it was 
a lie, but Dan, shaking visibly from head to foot, answered 
quietly and said, “I’ll not say no, coroner." 

At that Quilleash stepped out. “ But I’ll say no," he said, 
firmly. “ He’s a brave man, he is; and may be I’m on’y an 
ould rip, but d — n me if I’m goin’ to lie like that for nobody 
— no, not to save my own sowl." 

Then in his gruff tones, sometimes faltering, sometimes 
breaking into deep sobs, and then rising to deeper oaths, the 
old fellow told all. And that night all six of them — Dan, the 
four fishermen, and the lad Davy — were lodged in the prison 
at Castle Rushen. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE COURT OF GENERAL JAIL DELIVERY. 

From Christmas-tide onward through the dark months, 
until a “ dream of spring " came once again on the slumber- 
ing face of winter, the six men lay in Castle Rushen. Rumors 
from within the gray walls of the jail told that some of them 
were restive under their punishment, and that the spirits of 
others sunk under it, but that Dan bore up with the fortitude 
of resignation, and, though prone to much sadness, with even 
the cheerfulness of content. It was the duty of each man to 


THE DEEMSTEE. 


257 


take his turn at cleaning the cell, and it was said that Dan's 
turn seemed by his own counting to come frequently. Re- 
proaches he bore with humility, and on one occasion he took a 
blow from Crennel, who was small of stature and had a slight 
limp in one leg. Constant bickerings were rife among them, 
and. Dan was often their subject of quarrel, and still oftener 
their victim; but they had cheerful hours too, and sometimes 
a laugh together. 

Such were some of the reports that made gossip outside, 
where public curiosity and excitement grew keener as the half- 
yearly sitting of the Court of General Jail Delivery drew nearer. 
Copper riots and felonies of all descriptions, disputes as to 
tithe, and arbitrations as to the modes of counting the her- 
rings, sunk out of sight in prospect of the trial of Dan and his 
crew. From Point of Ayr to the Calf of Man it was the en- 
grossing topic, and none living could remember a time when 
public feeling ran so high. The son of the bishop was to be 
tried for the murder of the son of the Deemster, and a bigger 
issue could no man conceive. Variable enough was the popu- 
lar sympathy — sometimes with Dan, sometimes against him, 
always influenced by what way the wave of feeling flowed with 
regard to the Deemster and the bishop. And closely were these 
two watched at every turn. 

The Deemster showed uncommon animation, and even some 
sprightliness. He was more abroad than at any time for 
fifteen years before, and was usually accompanied by Jarvis 
Kerruish. His short laugh answered oftener to his own wise 
witticisms than at any time since the coming to the island of 
his brother, the bishop; but people whispered that his good 
spirits did not keep him constant company within the walls of 
his own house. There his daughter Mona, still soft as the 
morning dew and all but as silent, sat much alone. She^had 
grown “ wae " as folk said, rarely being seen outside the gates 
of Ballamona, never being heard to laugh, and showing little 
interest in life beyond the crib of her foster-child, Ewan's 
orphaned daughter. And people remembered her mother, 
how silent she had been, and how patient, and how like to 
what Mona was, and they said now, as they had said long ago, 
“ She's going ck>wn the steep places." 

The bishop had kept close to Bishop's Court. Turning 
night into day, and day into night, or knowing no times and 
seasons, he had been seen to wander at all hours up and down 
the glen. If any passed him as he crossed the road from the 
glen back to the house he had seemed not to see. His gray 
hair had grown snowy white, his tall figure drooped heavily* 


25 8 


THE DEEMSTER. 


from his shoulders, and his gait had lost all its spring. 
Stricken suddenly into great age, he had wandered about 
mumbling to himself, or else quite silent. The chapel on his 
episcopal demesne he had closed from the time of the death of 
Ewan, his chaplain. Thus had he borne himself, shut out 
from the world, until the primrose had come and gone, and 
the cuckoo had begun to call. Then as suddenly he under- 
went a change. Opening the chapel at Bishop’s Court, he 
conducted service there every Sunday afternoon. The good 
souls of the parish declared that never before had he preached 
with such strength and fervor, though the face over the pulpit 
looked ten long years older than on the Christmas morning 
when the longshore men brought up their dread burden from 
the Mooragh. Convocation was kept on Whit Tuesday as be- 
fore, and the bishop spoke with calm and grave power. His 
clergy said he had gathered strength from solitude and forti- 
tude, from many days spent alone, as in the wilderness, with 
his Maker. Here and there a wise one among his people said 
it might look better of him to take the beam out of his own 
eye than to be so very zealous in pointing out the motes in the 
eyes of others. The world did not stand still, though public 
interest was in suspense, and now and again some girl was 
presented for incontinence or some man for drunkenness. 
Then it was noticed that the censures of the church had begun 
to fall on the evil-doer with a great tenderness, and this set the 
wise ones whispering afresh that some one was busy at sweep- 
ing the path to his own door, and also that the black ox never 
trod on his own hoof. 

The day of the trial came in May. It was to be a day of 
doom, but the sun shone with its own indifference to the big 
little affairs of men. The spring had been a dry one, and over 
the drought came heat. From every corner of the island the 
people trooped off under the broiling sun to Castletown. The 
Court of General Jail Delivery was held in Castle Bushen, in 
the open square that formed the gate- way to the prison chapel, 
under the clear sky, without shelter from any weather. There 
the narrow space allotted to spectators was thronged with hot 
faces under beavers, mutches, and sun-bonnets. The passages 
from the castle gate on the quay were also thronged by crowds 
who could not see but tried to hear. From the lancet windows 
of the castle that overlooked the gate- way eager faces peered 
out, and on the lead flat above the iron staircase and over the 
great clock tower were companies of people of both sexes, who 
looked down and even listened when they could. The win- 
dows of the houses around the castle gate were thrown up for 


THE DEEMSTER. 


259 


spectators who sat on the sills. In the rigging of the brigs 
and luggers that lay in the harbor close under the castle walls 
sailors had perched themselves to look on, and crack jokes and 
smoke. Nearly the whole floor of the market-place was 
thronged, but under the cross, where none could see or hear, 
an old woman had set up ninepins, tipped with huge balls of 
toffee, and a score of tipsy fellows were busy with them amid 
much laughter and noise. A line of older men, with their 
hands in their pockets, were propped against the castle wall; 
and a young woman from Ballasalla, reputed to be a prophet- 
ess, was standing on the steps of the cross, and calling on the 
careless to take note that, while they cursed and swore and 
forgot their Maker, six men not twenty yards away were on 
the brink of their graves. 

The judges were the governor of the island (who was robed), 
the clerk of the roils, the two Deemsters (who wore wigs and 
gowns), the water bailiff, the bishop, the archdeacon, the 
vicars-general, and the twenty-four Keys. All these sat on a 
raised platform of planks. The senior and presiding Deem- 
ster (Thorkell Mylrea) who was the mouthpiece of the court, 
was elevated on a central dais. 

Thorkell was warm, eager, and even agitated. "When the 
bishop took his seat, amid a low murmur of the spectators, his 
manner was calm, and his quiet eyes seemed not to look into 
the faces about him. 

The prisoners were brought in from the cell that opened to 
the left of the gate- way. They looked haggard and worn, but 
were not wanting in composure. Dan, towering above the 
rest in his great stature, held his head low; his cheeks were 
ashy, but his lips were firm. By his side, half clinging to his 
garments, was the lad Davy, and at the other end of the line 
was old Quilleash, with resolution on his weather-beaten face. 
Crennel and Corkell were less at ease, but Teare's firm -set 
figure and hard-drawn mouth showed the dogged determination 
of a man who meant that day to sell his life dear. Sixty-eight 
men were present, summoned from the seventeen parishes of 
the island to compose a jury of twelve to be selected by the 
prisoners. Over all was the burning sun of a hot day in May. 

When the officer of the court had made the presentment, 
and was going on to ask the prisoners to plead, the proceed- 
ings were suddenly interrupted. The steward of the spiritual 
barony of the bishop, now sole baron of the island, rose to a 
point of law. One of the six prisoners who were indicted for 
felony was a tenant of the bishop's barony, and as such was 
entitled to trial not by the civil powers of the island, but by 


260 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


a jury of his barony, presided over by the proper president of 
his barony. The prisoner in question was Daniel M}drea, and 
for him the steward claimed the privilege of a remand until 
he could be brought up for trial before the court of the lord of 
the barony under which he lived. 

This claim created a profound sensation in the court. Dan 
himself raised his eyes, and his face had a look of pain. 
When asked by the Deemster if the claim was put forward by 
his wish or sanction he simply shook his head. The steward 
paid no attention to this repudiation. 44 This court,” he said, 
** holds no jurisdiction over a tenant of the bishop’s barony;” 
and forthwith he put in a document showing that Daniel 
Mylrea was tenant of a farm on the episcopal demesne, situate 
partly in Kirk Ballaugh and partly in Kirk Michael. 

The Deemster knew full well that he was powerless. Never- 
theless, he made a rigid examination of the prisoner’s lease, 
and, finding the document flawless, he put the point of law to 
the twenty-four Keys with every hampering difficulty. But 
the court was satisfied as to the claim, and allowed it. 44 The 
prisoner, Daniel Mylrea> stands remanded for trial at the court 
of his barony,” said the Deemster, in a tone of vexation; 4 4 and 
at that trial,” he added, with evident relish, 44 the president of 
the barony shall be, as by law appointed, assisted by a Deem- 
ster.” 

Dan was removed, his name was struck out of the indict- 
ment, and the trial of the five fishermen was proceeded with. 
They pleaded 44 Not guilty. ” The attorney-general prosecuted, 
stating the facts so far as they concerned the remaining pris- 
oners, and reflecting at the evidence against the prisoner who 
was remanded. He touched on the evidence of the sail-cloth, 
and then on the mystery attaching to a certain bundle of 
clothes, belts, and daggers that had been found in the prison 
at Peel Castle. At this reference the steward of the barony 
objected, as also against the depositions that inculpated Dan. 
The witnesses were fewer than at the Deemster’s inquest, and 
they had nothing to say that directly criminated the fishermen. 
Brief and uninteresting the trial turned out to be with the 
chief prisoner withdrawn, and throughout the proceedings the 
Deemster’s vexation was betrayed by his thin, sharp, testy 
voice. Some efforts were made to prove that Dan’s disappear- 
ance from Peel Castle had been brought about by the bishop; 
but the steward of the barony guarded so zealously the privi- 
leges of the ecclesiastical courts, that nothing less than an 
open and unseemly rupture between the powers of Church and 
State seemed imminent when the Deemster, losing composure, 


THE DEEMSTER. 


261 


was for pressing the irrelevant inquiry. Moreover, the Keys, 
who sat as arbiters of points of law and to “ pass ” the verdict 
of the jury, were clearly against the Deemster. 

The trial did not last an hour. When the jury was ready to 
return a verdict, the Deemster asked in Manx, as by ancient 
usage, “ Vod y fer-carree soie f" (May the man of the chancel 
[the bishop] sit?) And the foreman answered, “ Fod” (He 
may); the ecclesiastics remained in their seats; a verdict of 
“Not guilty 99 was returned, and straightway the five fisher- 
men were acquitted. 

Late the same day the Deemster vacated his seat on the 
dais, and then the bishop rose and took it with great solem- 
nity. That the bishop himself should sit to try his own son, as 
he must have tried any other felon who was a tenant of his 
barony, made a profound impression among the spectators. 
The archdeacon, who had hoped to preside, looked appalled. 
The Deemster sat below, and on either side were the ecclesi- 
astics, who had claimed their right to sit as judges in the civil 
court. Another jury, a jury of the barony, was impaneled. 
The sergeant of the barony brought Dan to the bar. The 
prisoner was still very calm, and his lips were as firm, though 
his face was as white and his head held as low as before. 
When a presentment was read over to him, charging him with 
causing the death of Ewan Mylrea, deacon in holy orders, and 
he was asked to plead, he lifted his eyes slowly, and answered 
in a clear, quiet, sonorous voice, that echoed from the high 
walls of the gate-way, and was heard by the people on the 
clock tower, “ Guilty.” 

As evidence had been taken at the Deemster’s inquest, no 
witnesses were now heard. The steward of the barony pre- 
sented. He dwelt on the prisoner’s special and awful crim- 
inality, in so far as he was the son of the bishop, taught from 
his youth up to think of human life as a holy thing, and 
bound by that honored alliance to a righteous way in life. 
Then he touched on the peculiar duty of right living in one 
who held the office of captain of his parish, sworn to preserve 
order and to protect life. 

When the steward had appended to his statement certain 
commonplaces cf extenuation based on the plea of guilty, the 
Deemster, amid a dead hush among the spectators, put ques- 
tions to the prisoner which were intended to elicit an explana- 
tion of his motive in the crime, and of the circumstances 
attending it. To these questions Dan made no answer. 

“ Answer me, sir,” the Deemster demanded, but Dan was 
still silent. Then the Deemster’s wrath mastered him. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


m 


“ It ill becomes a man in your position to refuse the only 
amends that you can make to justice for the pains to which 
you have put this court and another. " 

It was an idle outburst. Dan's firm lip was immovable. 
He looked steadily into the Deemster's |pe, and said not a 
word. 

The steward stepped in. “The prisoner," he said, “has 
elected to make the gravest of all amends to justice," and at 
that there was a deep murmur among the people. “ Never- 
theless, I could wish," said the steward, “ that he would also 
make answer to the Deemster's question." 

But the prisoner made no sign. 

“ There is some reason for thinking that, if all were known, 
where so much is now hidden, the crime to which the prisoner 
pleads guilty would wear a less grievous aspect." 

Still the prisoner gave no answer. 

“ Come, let us have done," said the Deemster, twisting 
impatiently in his seat. “ Pronounce the sentence, and let 
your sergeant carry it into effect." 

The murmur among the people grew to a great commotion, 
but in the midst of it the bishop was seen to rise, and then a 
deep hush fell on all. 

The bishop's white head was held erect, his seamed face was 
firm as it was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, was clear 
and full. “Daniel Mylrea," he said, “you have pleaded 
guilty to the great crime of murder. The sergeant of your 
barony will now remove you, and on the morning of this day 
of next week he will take you in his safe custody to the Tyn- 
wald Hill, in the center of the island, there, in the eye of light, 
and before the faces of all men, to receive the dreadful sentence 
of this court, and to endure its punishment." 


CHAPTER XXXVL 

CUT OFF FROM THE PEOPLE. 

During the week that followed the trial of Daniel Mylrea 
at the court of his barony, the excitement throughout the 
island passed all experience of public feeling. What was to 
be the sentence of the barony? This was the one question 
everywhere— at the inn, the mill, the smithy, the market- 
cross, the street, in the court-house; and if two shepherds 
hailed each other on the mountains they asked for the last 
news from Peel. 

With a silent acceptance of the idea that death alone could 


THE DEEMSTER. 


be the penalty of the crime that had been committed, there 
passed through the people the burden, first of a great awe and 
then of a great dread that any Christian man should die the 
death of hanging. Not for nearly two-score years had the 
island seen that horror, and old men shuddered at the memory 
of it. 

Then it came to be understood in a vague way that after all 
Daniel Mylrea was not to die. Whispers went from mouth to 
mouth that old Quilleash had sailed down to the Calf Sound 
with the “ Ben-my-Chree,” well stored with provisions. In 
a few days the old salt returned, walking overland, preserving 
an air of vast mystery, and shaking his head when his gossips 
questioned him. Then poor human nature, that could not 
bear to see Daniel Mylrea die, could not bear to see him saved 
either, and men who had sworn in their impotent white terror 
that never again should a gallows be built in the island, lusty 
fellows who had shown ruth for the first time, began to show 
gall for the hundredth, to nudge, to snigger, and to mutter 
that blood was thicker than water, and there was much be- 
tween saying and doing, as the sayin' was. 

The compassion that had been growing in secret began to 
struggle with the ungentle impulses that came of superstitious 
fear. It seemed to be true, as old folk were whispering, that 
Daniel Mylrea was the Jonah of the island. What had hap- 
pened in the first year of his life? A prolonged drought and 
a terrible famine. What was happening now? Another 
drought that threatened another famine. And people tried 
to persuade themselves that the sword of the Lord was over 
them, and that it would only rest and be quiet when they had 
executed God*s judgment on the guilty man. 

The day of Tynwald came, and the week before it had 
passed like a year. There was no sun, but the heat was 
stifling, the clouds hung low and dark and hot as the roof of 
an open oven, the air was sluggish, and the earth looked blue. 
Far across the sea to the north-west there was a thin streak 
of fiery cloud, and at some moments there was the smell of a 
thunder-storm in the heavy atmosphere. From north and 
south, from east and west the people trooped to Tynwald Hill. 
Never before within the memory of living man had so vast a 
concourse been witnessed on that ancient ground of assembly. 
Throughout the island the mill-wheel was stopped, the smithy 
fire was raked over with ashes, the plow lay in the furrow, the 
sheep were turned out on to the mountains, and men and 
women, old men, old women, and young children, ten thou- 
sand in all, with tanned faces and white, in sun-bonnets. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


264 

mutches, and capes, and some with cloaks in preparation for 
the storm that was coming, drove in their little springless 
carts, or rode on their small Manx ponies, or trudged on foot 
through the dusty roads, and over the bleached hill-sides and 
the parched curraghs. 

At ten o’clock the open green that surrounds the hill of 
Tynwald was densely thronged. Carts were tipped up in 
corners, and their stores of food and drink were guarded by a 
boy or a woman, who sat on the stern-board. Horses were 
tethered to the wheels, or turned loose to browse on a common 
near at hand. Men lounged on the green and talked, their 
hands in their pockets, their pipes in their mouths, or stood 
round the Tynwald Inn, lifting pannikins to their lips, and 
laughing — for there was merriment among them though the 
work for which they had come together was not a merry one. 
The mount itself was still empty, and twelve constables were 
stationed about the low wall that surrounded it, keeping the 
crowd back. And though, as the people met and mingled, 
the men talked of the crops and of the prospect for the fishing, 
and women of the wool and yarn, and boys tossed somersaults, 
and young girls betook themselves to girlish games, and girls 
of older growth in bright ribbons to ogling and giggling, and 
though there was some coarse banter and coarser singing, the 
excitement of the crowd beneath all was deep and strong. At 
intervals there was a movement of the people toward a church, 
St. John’s Church, that stood a little to the east of Tynwald, 
and sometimes a general rush toward the gate that looked 
westward toward Peeltown and the sea. Earlier in the day 
some one had climbed a mountain beyond the chapel, and put 
a light to the dry gorse at the top, and now the fire smoldered 
in the dense air, and set up a long sinuous trail of blue smoke 
to the empty vault of the sky. The mountain was called 
Greeba, which is the native word for grief. 

Toward half past ten old Paton Gorry, the sumner, went 
down the narrow, tortuous steps that led to the dungeon of 
Peel Castle. He carried fetters for the hands and legs of his 
prisoner, and fixed them in their places with nervous and 
fumbling fingers. His prisoner helped him as far as might 
be, and spoke cheerily in answer to his mumbled adieu. 

“ Pm not going to St. John’s, sir. 1 couldn’t give myself 
lave for it,” the sumner muttered in a breaking voice. With 
a choking sensation in his throat Daniel Mylrea said, “ God 
bless you, Paton,” and laid hold of the old man’s hand. 
Twenty times during the week the sumner had tried in vain 
to prevail on the prisoner to explain the circumstances attend* 


THE DEEMSTER. 


265 


ing his crime, and so earn the mitigation of punishment which 
had been partly promised. The prisoner had only shaken his 
head in silence. 

A few minutes afterward Daniel Mylrea was handed over in 
the guard-room to the sergeant of the barony, and Paton 
Gorry’s duties — the hardest that the world had yet given him 
to do — were done. 

The sergeant and the prisoner went out of the castle and 
crossed the narrow harbor in a boat. On the wooden jetty, 
near the steps by which they landed, a small open cart was 
drawn up, and there was a crowd of gaping faces about it. 
The two men got into the cart and were driven down the quay 
toward the path by the river that led to Tynwald under the 
foot of Slieu Whallin. As they passed through the town the 
prisoner was dimly conscious that white faces looked out of 
windows and that small knots of people were gathered at the 
corners of the alleys. But all this was soon blotted out, and 
when he came to himself he was driving under the trees, and 
by the side of the rumbling water. 

All the day preceding the prisoner had told himself that 
when his time came, his great hour of suffering and expiation, 
he must bear himself with fortitude, abating nothing of the 
whole bitterness of the atonement he was to make, asking no 
quarter, enduring all contumely, though men jeered as he 
passed or spat in his face. He thought he had counted the 
cost of that trial. Seven sleepless nights and seven days of 
torment had he given to try his spirit for that furnace, and he 
thought he could go through it and not shrink. In his soli- 
tary hours he had arranged his plans. While he drove from 
Peel to St. John’s he was to think of nothing that would sap 
his resolution, and his mind was to be a blank. Then, as he 
approached the place, he was to lift his eyes without fear, and 
not let them drop though their gaze fell on the dread thing 
that must have been built there. And so, very calmly, 
silently, and firmly, he was to meet the end of all. 

But now that he was no longer in the dungeon of the prison, 
where despair might breed bravery in a timid soul, but under 
the open sky where hope and memory grow strong together, 
he knew, though he tried to shut his heart to it, that his 
courage was oozing away. He recognized this house and that 
gate, he knew every turn of the river — where the trout lurked 
and where the eels sported — and when he looked up at the 
dun sky he knew how long it might take for the lightning to 
break through the luminous dullness of the thunder-cloud that 
hung over the head of Slieu Whallin. Do what he would to 


266 


THE DEEMSTER. 


keep his mind a blank, or to busy it with trifles of the way, he 
could not help reflecting that he was seeing these things for 
the last time. 

Then there came a long interval, in which the cart wherein 
he sat seemed to go wearily on, on, on, and nothing awakened 
his slumbering senses. When he recovered consciousness with 
a start he knew that his mind had been busy with many 
thoughts such as sap a man's resolution and bring his brave 
schemes to foolishness. He had been asking himself where 
his father was that day, where Mona would be then, and how 
deep their shame must be at the thought of the death he was 
to die. To him his death was his expiation, and little had he 
thought of the manner of it; but to them it was disgrace and 
horror. And so he shrunk within himself. He knew now 
that his great purpose was drifting away like a foolish voice 
that is emptied in the air. Groaning audibly, praying in 
broken snatches for strength of spirit, looking up and around 
with fearful eyes, he rode on and on, until at length, before 
he was yet near the end of his awful ride, the deep sound came 
floating to him through the air of the voices of the people 
gathered at the foot of Tynwald. It was like the sound the 
sea makes as its white breakers fall on some sharp reef a mile 
away; a deep, multitudinous hum of many tongues. When 
he lifted his head and heard it, his pallid face became ashy, 
his whitening lips trembled, his head dropped back to his 
breast, his fettered arms fell between his fettered legs, river 
and sky were blotted out of his eyes, and he knew that before 
the face of his death he was no better than a poor broken 
coward. 

At eleven o’clock the crowd at Tynwald had grown to a vast 
concourse that covered every foot of the green with a dense 
mass of moving heads. In an inclosed pathway that connected 
the chapel with the mount three carriages were drawn up. 
The Deemster sat in one of them, and his wizened face was 
full of uncharity. By his side was Jarvis Kerruish. On an 
outskirt of the crowd two men stood with a small knot of peo- 
ple around them; they were (Juilleash and Teare. The Balla- 
salla prophetess, with glittering eyes and hair in ringlets, was 
preaching by the door of the inn, and near her were Corkell 
and Crennel, and they sung when she sung, and while she 
prayed they knelt. Suddenly the great clamorous human bil- 
low was moved by a ruffle of silence that spread from side to 
side, and in the midst of a deep hush the door of the chapel 
opened, and a line of ecclesiastics came out and walked toward 
the mount. At the end of the line was the bishop, bare- 


THE DEEMSTER, 


26 ? 


headed, much bent, his face white and seamed, his step heavy 
and uncertain, his whole figure and carriage telling of the 
sword that is too keen for its scabbard. When the procession 
reached the mount the bishop ascended to the topmost round 
of it, and on the four green ledges below him his clergy ranged 
themselves. Almost at the same moment there was a subdued 
murmur among the people, and at one side of the green, the 
gate to the west, the crowd opened and parted, and the space 
widened and the line lengthened until it reached the foot of 
the Tynwald. Then the cart that brought the sergeant and 
his prisoner from the castle entered it slowly, and drew up, 
and then with head and eyes down, like a beast that is struck 
to its death, Daniel Mylrea dropped to his feet on the ground. 
He was clad in the blue cloth of a fisherman, with a brown 
knitted guernsey under his coat, and sea-boots over his stock- 
ings. He stood in his great stature above the shoulders of the 
tallest of the men around him; and women who were as far 
away as the door of the inn could see the seaman’s cap he 
wore. The sergeant drew him up to the foot of the mount, 
but his bowed head was never raised to where the bishop stood 
above him. An all-consuming shame sat upon him, and 
around him was the deep breathing of the people. 

Presently a full, clear voice was heard over the low mur- 
mur of the crowd, and instantly the mass of moving heads was 
lifted to the mount, and the sea of faces flashed white under 
the heaviness of the sky. 

“ Daniel Mylrea,” said the bishop, “ it is not for us to know 
if any hidden circumstance lessens the hideousness of your 
crime. Against all question concerning your motive your lips 
have been sealed, and we who are your earthly judges are com- 
pelled to take you at the worst. But if, in the fullness of your 
remorse, your silence conceals what would soften your great 
offense, be sure that your Heavenly J udge, who reads your 
heart, sees all. You have taken a precious life; you have 
spilled the blood of one who bore himself so meekly and lov- 
ingly and with such charity before the world that the hearts of 
all men were drawn to him. And you, who slew him in heat 
or malice, you he ever loved with a great tenderness. Your 
guilt is confessed, your crime is black, and now your punish- 
ment is sure.” 

The crowd held its breath while the bishop spoke, but the 
guilty man moaned feebly and his bowed head swayed to and 
fro. 

“ Daniel Mylrea, there is an everlasting sacredness in human 
life, and God who gave it guards it jealously. When man 


268 


THE DEEMSTER. 


violates it, God calls for vengeance, and if we who are His law- 
givers on earth shut our ears to that cry of the voice of God, 
His fierce anger goes forth as a whirlwind and His word as a 
fire upon all men. Woe unto ns if now we sin against the 
Lord by falling short of the punishment that He has ordered. 
Righteously and without qualm of human mercy, even as God 
has commanded, we. His servants, must execute judgment on 
the evil-doer, lest His wrath be poured out upon this island 
itself, upon man and upon beast, and upon the fruit of the 
ground.” 

At that word the deep murmur broke out afresh over the 
people, and under the low sky their upturned faces were 
turned to a grim paleness. And now a strange light came 
into the eyes of the bishop, and his deep voice quivered. 

“ Daniel Mylrea,” he continued, “ it is not the way of God’s 
worse chastisement to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
tooth, and to spill blood for blood that has been spilled. When 
the sword of the Lord goes forth it is sometimes to destroy the 
guilty man, and sometimes to cut him off from the land of the 
living, to banish him to the parched places of the wilderness, 
to end the days wherein his sleep shall be sweet to him, to blot 
out his name from the names of men, and to give him no 
burial at the last when the darkness of death shall cover him.” 

The bishop paused. There was a dreadful silence, and the 
distant sea sent up into the still air, under the low clouds that 
reverberated like a vault, a hoarse, threatening murmur: 

“ Daniel Mylrea, you are not to die for your crime.” 

At that ill-omened word the prisoner staggered like a drunken 
man, and lifted his right hand mechanically above his head, as 
one who would avert a blow. And now it was easy to see in 
the wild light in the eyes of the bishop, and to hear in his hol- 
low, tense voice, that the heart of the father was wrestling 
with the soul of the priest, and that every word that condemned 
the guilty man made its sore wound on the spirit of him that 
uttered it. 

“ You have chosen death rather than life, but on this side 
of death’s darkness you have yet, by God’s awful will, to be- 
come a terror to yourself; you have water of gall to drink; 
toilf ully you have to live in a waste land alone, where the 
sweet light of morning shall bring you pain, and the darkness 
of night have eyes to peer into your soul; and so on and on 
from year to weary year until your step shall fail and there 
shall be never another to help you up; hopeless, accursed, 
finding death in life, looking only for life in death, and crying 
in the bitterness of your desolation , 4 Cursed be the day wherein 


THE DEEMSTER. 


269 


i was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be 
blessed! Cursed be the man that brought tidings to my fa- 
ther, saying, 4 4 A man-child is born unto thee,” making his 
heart glad/ ” 

One hoarse cry as of physical pain burst from the prisoner 
before these awful words were yet fully uttered. The guilty 
man gripped his head between his hands, and like a beast that 
is smitten in the shambles he stood in a stupor, his body sway- 
ing slightly, a film upon his eyes, and his mind sullen and 
stunned. There was silence for a moment, and when the 
bishop spoke again his tempest-beaten head, white with the 
flowers of the grave, trembled visibly. The terrified people 
were grasping each other's hands, and their hard-drawn breath 
went through the air like the hiss of the sea at its ebb. As 
they looked up at the bishop they understood that an awful 
struggle of human love and spiritual duty was going on be- 
fore them, and over all their terror they were moved to a deep 
compassion. 

44 Daniel Mylrea,” said the bishop again, and, notwithstand- 
ing his efforts to uphold it, his voice softened and all but 
broke, 44 vengeance belongs to God, but we who are men and 
prone to fall are not to deny mercy. When your fetters are 
removed, and you leave this place, you will go to the Calf 
Sound that flows at the extreme south of the island. There 
you will find your fishing-boat, stored with such as may meet 
your immediate wants. With that offering we part from you 
while life shall last. Use it well, but henceforward look for 
no succor whence it has come. Though you loathe your life, 
be zealous to preserve it, and hasten not, I warn you, by one 
hour the great day of God's final reckoning. Most of all be 
mindful of the things of an eternal concernment, that we who 
part from you now may not part forever as from a soul given 
over to everlasting darkness.” 

The prisoner gave no further sign. Then the bishop turned 
with a wild gesture to the right and to the left and lifted both 
his hands. 44 Men and women of Man,” he said, in a voice 
that rose to the shrillness of a cry, 44 the sentence of the court 
of the barony of the island is, that this man shall be cut off 
from his people. Henceforth let him have no name among 
us, nor family, nor kin. From now forever let no flesh touch 
his flesh. Let no tongue speak to him. Let no eye look on 
him. If he should be an hungered, let none give him meat. 
When he shall be sick, let none minister to him. When his 
death shall come, let no man bury him. Alone let him live, 


270 


THE DEEMSTER. 


alone let him die, and among the beasts of the field let him 
hide his unburied bones.” 

A great hoarse groan arose from the people, such as comes 
from the bosom of a sullen sea. The pathos of the awful 
struggle which they had looked upon was swallowed up in the 
horror of its tragedy. What they had come to see was as 
nothing to the awfulness of the thing they had witnessed. 
Death was terrible, but this was beyond death’s terror. Some- 
where in the dark chambers of the memory of their old men 
the like of it lived as a grim gorgon from old time. They 
looked up at the mount, and the gaunt figure standing there 
above the vast multitude of moving heads seemed to be some- 
thing beyond nature. The trembling, upraised hands, the 
eyes of fire, the white, quivering lips, the fever in the face 
which consumed the grosser senses, appeared to transcend the 
natural man. And below was the prisoner, dazed, stunned, a 
beast smitten mortally and staggering to its fall. 

The sergeant removed the fetters from the prisoner’s hands 
and feet, and turned him about with his face toward the south. 
Not at first did the man seem to realize that he was no longer 
a prisoner but an outcast, and free to go whither he would 
save where other men might be. Then, recovering some 
partial consciousness, he moved a pace or two forward, and in- 
stantly the crowd opened for him and a long wide way was 
made through the dense mass, and he walked through it, slow 
yet strong of step, with head bent and eyes that looked into 
the eyes of no man. Thus he passed away from the Tynwald 
toward the foot of Slieu Whallin and the valley of Foxdale that 
runs southward. And the people looked after him, and the 
bishop on the mount and the clergy below followed him with 
their eyes. A great wave of compassion swept over the crowd 
as the solitary figure crossed the river and began to ascend the 
mountain path. The man was accursed, and none might look 
upon him with pity; but there were eyes that grew dim at that 
sight. 

The smoke still rose in a long blue column from the side of 
Greeba, and the heavy cloud that had hung at poise over the 
head of Slieu Whallin had changed its shape to the outlines of 
a mighty bird, luminous as a sea-gull, but of a sickly saffron. 
Over the long line of sea and sky to the west the streak of red 
that had burned duskily had also changed to a dull phosphoric 
light, that sent eastward over the sky’s low roof a misty glow. 
And while the people watched the lonely man who moved away 
from them across the breast of the hill, a pale sheet of light- 
ning, without noise of thunder, flashed twice or thrice before 


THE DEEMSTER. 


271 


their faces. So still was the crowd, and so reverberant the air, 
that they could hear the man’s footsteps on the stony hill-side. 
When he reached the topmost point of the path, and was about 
to descend to the valley, he was seen to stop, and presently to 
turn his face, gazing backward for a moment. Against the 
dun sky his figure could be seen from head to foot. While he 
stood the people held their breath. When he was gone and 
the mountain had hidden him the crowd breathed audibly. 

At the next moment all eyes were turned back to the mount. 
There the bishop, a priest of God no longer, but only a poor 
human father now, had fallen to his knees, and lifted his two 
trembling arms. Then the pent-up anguish of the wretched 
heart that had steeled itself to a mighty sacrifice of duty burst 
forth in a prayer of great agony. 

“ Oh, Father in heaven, it is not for him who draws the 
sword of the Lord’s vengeance among men to cry for mercy, 
but rather to smite and spare not, yea, though his own flesh 
be smitten; but, oh, Thou that fillest heaven and earth, from 
whom none can hide himself in any secret place that Thou 
shalt not see him, look with pity on the secret place of the 
heart of Thy servant and hear his cry. Oh, Lord on High, 
whose anger goes forth as a whirlwind, and whose word is like 
as a fire, what am I but a feeble, broken, desolate old man? 
Thou knowest my weakness, and how my familiars watched 
for my halting, and how for a period my soul failed me, and 
how my earthly affections conquered my heavenly office, and 
how God’s rule among this people was most in danger from 
the servant of God, who should be valiant for the Lord on the 
earth. And if through the trial of this day Thou hast been 
strength of my strength, woe is me now, aged and full of days, 
feeble of body and weak of faith, that Thou hast brought this 
heavy judgment upon me. God of Goodness and Kighteous 
Judge of all the earth, have mercy and forgive if we weep for 
him who goeth away and shall return no more, nor see his 
home and kindred. Follow him with Thy Spirit, touch him 
with Thy finger of fire, pour upon him the healing of Thy 
grace, so that after death’s great asundering, when all shall 
stand for one judgment, it may not be said of Thy servant, 
‘ Write ye this old man childless.’ ” 

It was the cry of a great shattered soul, and the terrified 
people dropped to their knees while the voice pealed over theii 
heads. When the bishop was silent the clergy lifted him to 
his feet, and helped him down the pathway to the chapel. 
There was then a dull murmur of distant thunder from across 
the sea. The people fell apart in confusion. Before the last 


272 


THE DEEMSTER. 


of them had left the green the cloud of pate saffron over the 
head of Slieu Whallin had broken into lightning, and the rain 
was falling heavily. 

o- 


THE BRIEF RELATION OF DANIEL MYLREA, 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

OF HIS OUTCAST STATE. 

1, Daniel Mylrea, the son (God forgive me!) of Gilcrist 
Mylrea, Bishop of Man — grace and peace be with that saintly 
soul! — do set me down in the year (as well as my reckoning 
serves me) 1712, the month September, the day somewhere 
between the twentieth and the thirtieth, to begin a brief rela- 
tion of certain exceeding strange accidents of this life that 
have befallen me since, at the heavy judgment of God, I first 
turned my face from the company of men. Not, as the good 
Bunyan was, am 1 now impelled to such a narration — bear 
with me though I name myself with that holy man — by hope 
or thought that the goodness and bounty of God may thereby 
be the more advanced before the sons of men, though it is for 
me also to magnify the Heavenly Majesty, insomuch as that 
by this door of my outcast state He has brought me to partake 
of grace and life. Alone 1 sit to write what perchance no eye 
may read, but it is with hope, perhaps only vain, that she who 
is dear to me beyond words of appraisement may yet learn of 
the marvels which did oft occur, that I try in these my last 
days to put my memory under wardship. For it has fastened 
on me with conviction that God has chosen me for a vessel of 
mercy, and that very soon He will relieve me from the body 
of the death 1 live in. If I finish this writing before I go 
hence, and if when I am gone she reads it, methinks it will 
come to her as a deep solace that her prayer of long since .was 
answered, and that, though so sorely separated, we twain have 
yet been one even in this world, and lived together by day and 
hour in the cheer of the spirit. But if the gracious end should 
come before I bring my task to a period, and she should know 
only of my forlorn condition and team nothing of tlte grace 
wherein much of its desolation was lost, and never come to an 
understanding of such of those strange accidents as to her 


THE DEEMSTER. 273 

knowledge have befallen, then that were also well, for she 
must therein be spared many tears. 

It was on May 29, 1705 — seven years and four months, as 1 
reckon it, back from this present time — that in punishment of 
my great crime the heavy sentence fell on me that cut me off 
forever from the number of the people. What happened on 
that day and on the days soon following it I do partly remem- 
ber with the vividness of horror, and partly recall with diffi- 
culty and mistrust from certain dark places of memory that 
seem to be clouded over and numb. When I came to myself 
as 1 was plodding over the side of Slieu W hall in, the thunder 
was loud in my ears, the lightning was flashing before my eyes, 
and the rain was swirling around me. I minded them not, 
but went on, hardly seeing what was about or above me, on 
and on, over mountain road and path, until the long day was 
almost done and the dusk began to deepen. Then the strength 
of the tempest was spent, and only the hinder part of it beat 
out from the west a thin, misty rain, and I found myself in 
Kushen, on the south brow of the glen below Car-ny-Gree. 
There I threw myself down on the turf with a great numb- 
ness and a great stupor upon me, both in body and in mind. 
How long I lay there I know not, whether a few minutes only, 
or, as I then surmised, near four-and-twenty hours; but the 
light of day was not wholly gone from the sky when I lifted 
my head from where it had rested on my hands, and saw that 
about me in a deep half circle stood a drift of sheep, all still, 
save for their heavy breathing, and all gazing in their ques- 
tioning silence down on me. I think in my heart, remember- 
ing my desolation, 1 drew solace from this strange fellowship 
on the lone mountain-side, but 1 lifted my hand and drove the 
sheep away, and I thought as they went they bleated, but I 
could hear nothing of their cry, and so surmised that under 
the sufferings of that day I had become deaf. 

I fell back to the same stupor as before, and when I came to 
myself again the moon was up, and a white light was around 
the place where I sat. With the smell of the sheep in my 
nostrils I thought they might be standing about me again, but 
I could see nothing clearly, and so stretched out my hands 
either way. Then from their confusion in scurring away, 1 
knew that the sheep had indeed been there, and that under the 
sufferings of that day I had also failed in my sight. 

The tempest was over by this time, the mountain turf had 
run dry, and 1 lay me down at length and fell into a deep sleep 
without dreams; and so ended the first day of my solitary 
state. 


274 : 


THE DEEMSTER. 


When I awoke the sun was high, and the wheat-ear was sing- 
ing on a stone very close above me, whereunder her pale blue 
egg she had newly laid. I know not what wayward humor 
then possessed me, but it is true that I reached my hand to 
the little egg and looked at it, and crushed it between my lin- 
ger and thumb, and cast its refuse away. My surmise of the 
night before I now found to be verified, that hearing and sight 
were both partly gone from me. No man ever mourned less 
at first knowledge of such infirmities, but in truth 1 was almost 
beyond the touch of pain, and a sorer calamity would have 
wanted strength to torture me. I rose and set my face south- 
ward, for it was in the Calf Sound, as I remembered, that I 
was to find my boat, and if any hope lived in my heart, so 
numb of torpor, it was that perchance I might set sail, and get 
myself away. 

I walked between Barrule and Dalby, and came down on the 
eastward of Cronk-na-Irey-Lhaa. Then I, who had never be- 
fore known my strength to fail, grew suddenly weary, and 
would fain have cast me down to rest. So to succumb I could 
not brook, but I halted in my walking and looked back, and 
across the plain to the east, and down to the Bay of Fleswick 
to the west. Many times since have I stood there and looked 
on sea and sky, and mountain and dale, and asked myself was 
ever so fair a spot, and if the plains of heaven were fairer? 
But that day my dim eyes scoured the sea for a sail and the 
mountains for a man, and nothing did they see of either, and 
all else was then as nothing. 

Yet, though I was so eager to keep within sight of my fel- 
low-man, I was anxious not to come his way, and in choosing 
my path I walked where he was least likely to be. Thus, hold- 
ing well to the west of Fleswick, I took the cliff-head toward 
Brada, and then came down between Port Erin and Port-le- 
Mary to the moors that stretch to the margin of the sound. 
Some few I met, chiefly shepherds and fishermen, but I lifted 
my eyes to none, and none gave me salutation. This was well, 
for my heart was bitter, and if any had spoken, not knowing 
me, I doubt not I should have answered ill. In my great heart- 
torpor, half blind, half deaf, I was that day like a wounded 
beast of the field, ranging the moorland with a wild abandon- 
ment and dangerous to its kind. 

When 1 came to Cregneesh and saw it for the first time, a 
little disjointed gypsy encampment of mud-built tents pitched 
on the bare moor, the sky was reddening across the sea, and 
from that I knew how far advanced the day must be, how slow 
my course had been, and how low my strength. In half an 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


275 


hour more I had sighted my boat, the te Ben-my-Chree,” 
where she lay in the Doon Creek of the sound, at the length 
of some fifty fathoms inside the rocks of Kitterland. When I 
came up to her I found her anchored in some five fathoms of 
water, with the small boat lying dry on the shingly beach. 
Her cabin contained provisions enough for present needs, and 
more than that I was in no mood to think about. Since the 
morning of the day before 1 had not broken fast, but now I 
eat hungrily of oaten and barley cake. Later in the evening, 
when the stars were out and the moon, which was in its last 
quarter, was hanging over the Calf, I mixed myself some por- 
ridge of rye-meal and cold water, and eat it on the deck, and 
then went below to my bunk and lay me down alone. Be- 
tween sleep and waking I tried to think of my position and to 
realize it, but an owl was hooting somewhere on the land, and 
somewhere over the waters of the sound a diver was making 
his unearthly laugh. I could not think save of the hooting 
owl and the screaming diver, and when I thought of them, 
though their note was doleful and seemed to tell of suffering 
or perhaps of demoniac delight, 1 could not thank God that 1 
had been made a man. Thus feeling how sore a thing it is to 
be a creature living under the wrath of God, I tossed on my 
bunk until I fell to sleep; and so ended the second day of my 
unblessed condition. 

To follow closely all that befell on the next day, or the many 
days thereafter whereof I kept no reckoning, were to weary 
my spirit. One thing I know, that a sudden numbness of the 
spiritual life within me left me a worse man than I had been 
before the day of my cutting off, and that I did soon lose the 
little 1 had of human love and tenderness. My gun had been 
put in the boat, and with that 1 ranged the cliffs and the moor 
from the Mull Hills that lie to the west of Cregneesh to the 
Chasms that are to the east of it. Many puffins I shot, that 
much frequent these shores, but their flesh was rank and salt, 
and they were scarcely worth the powder I spent on them. 
Thus it sometimes happened that, being in no straits for food, 
I cast the birds away, or did not put myself to the pains of 
lifting them up after they fell to my gun, but went on, never- 
theless, to destroy them in my wanton humor. Rabbits 1 
snared by a trick I learned when a boy, and sometimes cooked 
them in the stove and eat them like a Christian man, and at 
other times I sat me down on the hill-side and rived them 
asunder as a wild creature of the hills might do. But whether 
I eat in my boat or on the cliff I took no religion to my table, 
and thought only that 1 liked my food or misliked it. 


276 


THE HEEMSTEB. 


Many times in these first days I had to tear myself away 
from thinking of my" condition, for to do so was like the stab 
of a knife to my brain, and I plainly saw that in that way mad- 
ness itself would lie. If 1 told myself that other men had 
been cast alone ere now in desolate places where no foot of 
man was and no sound of a human voice, a great stroke would 
come upon my spirit with the thought that only their bodies 
had been cast away, but that my soul was so. The marooned 
seaman on an uninhabited island, when at length he set eyes 
on his fellow-man, might lift up his heart to God, but to me 
the company of men was not blessed. Free 1 was to go where 
men were, even to the towns wherein they herded together, 
but go where I would 1 must yet be alone. 

With this thought, and doubting not that for me the day of 
grace was past and gone, since God had turned his face from 
the atonement I had erewhile been minded to make, I grew 
day by day more bitter in my heart, and found it easiest to 
shut my mind by living actively from hour to hour. Then, 
like a half-starved hound, I went abroad at day-break and 
scoured the hills the daylong, and returned to my bed at night. 
I knew I was a baser thing than I had been, and it brought 
some comfort then to know that I was alone and no eye saw 
me as I now was. Mine wa£ a rank hold of life, and it gave 
me a savage delight unknown before to live by preying on 
other creatures. I shot and slew daily and hourly, and if for 
a moment I told myself that what I had killed held its life on 
the same tenure that I did, my humanity was not touched ex- 
cept to feel a strange wild thrill that it was not 1 that lay dead. 
Looking back over these seven years, it comes to me as an un- 
natural thing that this mood can ever have been mine; but 
mine it was, and from the life of it may God in His mercy 
keep all Christian men. 

One day — I think it must have been somewhere toward the 
end of the first month of my outcast state — I was ranging the 
cliff-side above the gray rocks of the Black Head when 1 
chanced on a hare and shot it. On coming up with it I found 
it was lean and bony, and so turned aside and left it as it 
squeaked and bounced from my feet. This was in the morn- 
ing and toward nightfall I returned by the same way and saw 
the hare lying by a brook-side, ragged and bleeding, but still 
alive. At sight of me the wee thing tried to move away, but 
its weakness and a clot of its blood kept it down, and, feeling 
its extremity, it lifted its two slender paws in the air, while its 
glistening eyes streamed visibly, and set up a piteous cry like 
the cry of a little child. I can not write what then I did, for 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


277 


it wounds me sore to think of it, but when it was done, and 
that piteous cry was no more in mine ears, suddenly I said with 
myself this awful word, “I am no longer a man, but a beast 
of the field; and the God of mercy and of tenderness has cast 
me forever out of the hollow of His hand. ” 


CHAPTER XXXV1I1. 


OF HIS WAT OF LIFE. 


This meeting with the poor hare, though now it looks so 
trivial a thing, did then make a great seizure upon my mind, 
so that it changed my course and habit of life. For ceasing 
not to believe that I was wholly giyen over to a reprobate soul, 
I yet laid my gun aside, and locked my shot and powder in a 
drawer beneath my bunk, and set my face toward new ways of 
living. First 1 put myself to counting all that I possessed. 
Thus I found that of rye and Indian meal 1 had a peck each, 
of barley a peck, with two quarters’ of fine barley flour, of oats 
a peck, with two quarters of oaten meal, of potatoes two 
kischen, beside onions and a little common salt. In the hold 
under the hatches there were stored sundry useful implements 
— a spade, a fork, a hedge-knife, some hempen rope and twine, 
and with the rest were the four herring-nets which belonged 
to the boat, a mackerel-net, and some deep-sea lines. Other 
things there were that 1 do not name — wanting memory of 
them at this time of writing — but enough in all for most uses 
that a lone man might have. 

And this had ofttimes set me wondering why, if it had been 
meant that 1 should be cast utterly away, I had been provided 
with means of life, who could well have found them for my- 
self. But after that meeting with the hare I perceived the end 
’ that I should not, without guilt, de- 



Christian man when hunger had to 


be satisfied. 

And herein also I found the way of the stern Judge with 
guilty man, that, having enough for present necessities, I had 
little for the future, beyond the year that then was, and that 
if I must eat, so I must work. Thus upon a day somewhere, 
as 1 reckon, about a month after my cutting off, I rose early, 
and set myself to delve a piece of fallow ground — where all 
was fallow — two roods or more in extent, lying a little to the 
north of the Black Head, and to the south of the circle of 
stones that stand near by. All day I wrought fasting, and 
when darkness fell in the fallows were turned. Next morning 
I put down my seed, of potatoes a half kischen, cut in quar- 


278 


THE DEEMSTER. 


ters where the eyes were many, and also of barley and oats half 
a peck each, keeping back my other half peck lest the ground 
were barren, or the weather against it, or the year too far worn 
for such-like crops. 

And that day of the delving, the first on which I wrought as 
a man, was also the first on which I felt a man’s craving for 
the company of other men. The sun was strong all the fore 
part of the day, and its hot rays scorched the skin of my back 
— for I had stripped to my waist for my labor — and that set 
me thinking what month it was, and wondering what was do- 
ing in the world, and how long 1 had been where I then was. 
When I returned to my boat at nightfall, the air, as I remem- 
ber it, was quiet over the sound as it might be in a cloister, 
and only the gulls were jabbering on Kitterland and the cor- 
morants at the water’s edge. And I sat on the deck while the 
sun went down in the sea, and the red sky darkened and the 
stars began to show and the moon to look out. Then I went 
below and eat my barley bread and thought of what it was to 
be alone. 

It was that night that I bethought me of my watch, which 
I had not once looked for since the day of my immersion in 
the Cross Vein on Orrisdale, when I found it stopped from be- 
ing full of water. In my fob it had lain with its seals and 
chain since then, but now 1 took it out and cleaned it with oil 
from the fat of the hare and wound it up. For months there- 
after I set a great store by it, always carrying it in my fob 
when I went abroad, and when I came home to the boat 
always hanging it on a nail to the larboard of the stove-pipe in 
the cabin. And in the long silence of the night, when I heard 
it, sure, I thought, it is the same to me as good company. 
Very careful I was to wind it when the sun set, but if per- 
chance it ran down, and I awoke in my bunk, and, listening, 
heard it not, then it was as if the pulse had stopped of the 
little world I lived in, and there was nothing but a great empti- 
ness. 

But withal my loneliness increased rather than diminished, 
and though I had no longer any hankering after my old way 
of life in ranging the moorlands with my gun, yet 1 felt that 
the activity of that existence had led me otf from thinking too 
much of my forlorn condition. Wherefore, when my potatoes 
had begun to show above the ground, and I had earthed them 
up, I began to bethink me touching my boat, that it must be 
now the time of the herring-fishing come again, and that I 
would go out of nights and see what I could take. So never 
doubting that single-handed 1 could navigate the lugger, 1 


THE DEEMSTER. 


279 


hoisted the nets out of the hold athwart the bank-board, and 
took them ashore to mend and to bask them on the beach. I 
had spread them out on the shingle, and was using my knife 
and. twine on the holes of the dog-fish, when suddenly from 
behind me there came the loud bark of a dog. Well I re- 
member how I trembled at the sound of it, for it was the 
nearest to a man's voice that 1 had heard these many 
lonesome days, and how fearfully I turned my head over my 
shoulder as if some man had touched me and spoken. But 
what I saw was a poor mongrel dog, small as a cur, and with 
ragged ears, a peaky nose, and a scant tail, which for all its 
loud challenge it dangled wofully between its legs. Until 
then I had never smiled or wept since my cutting off, and 1 
believed myself to have lost the sense of laughter and of tears, 
but I must have laughed at the sight of the dog, so much did 
it call to mind certain brave vaunters 1 had known, who would 
come up to a bout of wrestling with a right lusty brag, and 
straightway set to trembling before one had well put eyes on 
them. At the sound of my voice the dog wagged his tail, and 
crept up timidly with his muzzle down, and licked the hand 1 
held out to him. All day he sat by me and watched me at my 
work, looking up in my face at whiles with a wistful gaze, and 
I gave him a morsel of oaten cake, which he eat greedily, seem- 
ing to be half starved of hunger. And when at dusk my task 
was finished, and I rose and got into tfie dingy, thinking now 
he would go his ways and be seen of me no more, he leaped 
into the boat after me, and when we reached the lugger he set- 
tled himself in the corner under the locker as if he had now 
fully considered it that with me he would make his habitation 
henceforth. 

Having all things in readiness for the fishing, I slipped an- 
chor upon an evening toward autumn, as 1 reckoned, for the 
leaves of the trammon were then closing like a withered hand 
and the berries of the hollin were reddening. When the stars 
were out, but no moon was yet showing, 1 put about head to 
the wind, and found myself in nowise hampered because 
short-handed, for when I had to take in my sails 1 lashed my 
tiller, and being a man of more than common strength of arm 
it cost me nothing to step my mainmast. 

That night, and many nights thereafter, I had good takings 
of fish, and in the labor of looking after my corks and making 
fast my seizings the void in my mind was in some wise filled 
with other matter than thoughts of my abject state. But one 
thing troubled me at first, namely, that I took more fish by 
many meshes than I could ever consume. To make an end of 


280 


THE DEEMSTER. 


my fishing was a thing I could not bring myself to, for 1 
counted it certain that so to do would be to sink back to my 
former way of living. Wherefore I thought it safest to seek 
some mode of disposing of my fish, such as would keep me at 
my present employment and do no harm to my feelings as a 
man, for with this I had now to reckon watchfully, being in 
constant danger, as I thought, of losing the sense of manhood. 

So I soused some hundreds of my herrings with rough salt, 
which 1 distilled from the salt water by boiling it in a pan 
with pebbles. The remainder 1 concluded to give to such as 
would consume them, and how to do this, being what I was, 
cost me many bitter thoughts, wherein I seemed to be the 
most unblessed of all men. At length I hit on a device, and 
straightway brought it to bear. Leaving my fishing-ground 
while the night was not yet far spent, I ran into the sound 
before dawn, for soon I learned those narrow waters until they 
grew familiar as the palm of my hand. Then before the sun 
rose above the Stack of Scarlet, and while the eastern sky was 
only dabbled with pink, I, with a basket of herrings on my 
shoulder, crossed the moor to Cregneesh, where the people are 
poor and not proud, and, creeping in between the cabins, laid 
my fish down in the open place that is before the little chapel, 
and then went my way quickly least a door should suddenly 
open or a window be lifted, and a face look forth. Thrice I 
did this before 1 marked that there were those who were curi- 
ous to known whence the fish came, and then I was put on 
my mettle to go into the village and yet to keep myself from 
being seen, for well I knew that if any eye beheld me, that 
knew me who I was, there would, thenceforward, be an end of 
the eating of my herrings, even among the poorest, and an 
end of my fishing also. But many times 1 went into Creg- 
neesh without being seen of auy man, and now I know not 
whether to laugh or to weep when I look back on the days 1 
write of, and see myself like a human fox stealing in by the 
gray of dawn among the sleeping homes of men. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

OF THE GHOSTLY HAHD UPOH HIM. 

All that autumn I followed the herrings, choosing my 
ground mainly by guess, but sometimes seeing the blue lights 
of the herring fleet rise close under my quarter, and at other 
times, when the air was still, hearing voices of men or the 
sound of laughter rumored over the quiet waters. But ever 
fanciful to me, as a dream of a friend dead when it is past, 


THE DEEMSTER. 


281 


was that sound on the sea, and as often as I heard it 1 took in 
my nets and hauled my sails, and stood out for the sound. 
Putting no light on my mi tch- board I would ofttimes pass the 
fleet within a cable's length and yet not be known, but once 
and again I knew by the hush of voices and the dying away of 
laughter on the boats about me that my dark craft was seen 
rjcudding like a black bird of evil omen through the night. 

In my cabin I was used to burn a tallow dip made of the fat 
of the birds I had shot and rushes from the soft places of the 
moor, and while my boat drifted under the mizzen between 
take and take of herrings I would go below and sit with my 
dog. He grew sleek with the fare I found him, and I in these 
days recovered in a measure my sense of sight and hearing, for 
the sea's breath of brine is good to man. Millish veg-veen I 
called him, and, though a man of small cheer, I smiled to 
think what a sorry misname that name would seem in our 
harder English tongue. For my poor mongrel cur had his 
little sorry vices, such as did oft set me wondering what the 
chances of his life had been, and whether like his new mess- 
mate he had not somewhere been driven out. Nevertheless, 
he had his good parts, too, and was a creature of infinite 
spirits. I think we were company each to the other, and if he 
had found me a cheerier mate-fellow, I doubt not we should 
have had some cheerful hours together. 

But in truth, though my fishing did much to tear me away 
from the burden of myself, it yet left me many lonesome 
hours wherein my anguish was sore and deep, and, looking to 
the years that might be before me, put me to the bitter ques- 
tion whether, being a man outside God's grace, I could hold 
out on so toilsome a course. Also, when I fell to sleep in the 
day-time, after my work of the night was done, I was much 
wrought upon by troublous dreams, which sometimes brought 
back the very breath odor of my boyish days with the dear 
souls that filled them with joy, and sometimes plagued me 
with awful questions which in vain 1 tried to answer, knowing 
that my soul’s welfare lay therein. And being much followed 
by the thought that the spirit of the beast of the field lay in 
wait to fall on the spirit of the man within me, I was also put 
to great terror in my watchfulness and the visions that came 
to me in hours of idleness and sleep. But suddenly this sen- 
tence fell on my mind: Thou art free to go whithersoever thou 
wilt, though it be the uttermost reaches of the earth. Go, 
then, where men are, and so hold thy soul as a man. 

Long did this sentence trouble me, not being able to make 
a judgment upon it, but at length it fastened on me that J 


m 


THE DEEMSTER. 


mast follow it, and that all the dread I had felt hitherto of 
the face of man was no more than a thinkso. Thereupon I 
concluded that I would go into Castletown at.high fair on the 
next market-day, which 1 should know from other days by the 
carts I could descry from the top of the Mull going the way of 
Rushen Church and Kentraugh. This resolve I never brought 
to bear, for the same day whereon I made it a great stroke fell 
upon my spirit and robbed me of the little wherewith I had 
tried to comfort me. 

Going out of the sound that night by the Spanish Head, for 
the season was far worn and the herrings lay to the eastward 
of the island, 1 marked in the dusk that a smack that bore the 
Peel brand on its canvas was rounding the Chicken Rocks of 
the Calf. So I stood out well to sea, and did not turn my 
head to the wind, and cast my nets, until I was full two 
leagues from shore. Then it was black dark, for the night 
was heavy, and a mist lay between sea and sky. But soon 
thereafter I saw a blue light to my starboard bow, and guessed 
that the smack from Peel had borne down in my wake. How 
long I lay on that ground I know not, for the takings were 
good, and I noted not the passage of time. But at short 
whiles I looked toward the blue light, and marked that as my 
boat drifted so did the smack drift, and that we were yet 
within hail. The moon came out with white streamers from 
behind a rack of cloud, and knowing then that the fishing was 
over for that night — for the herring does not run his gills into 
mischief when he has light to see by — I straightway fell to 
hauling my nets. And then it was that I found the smell of 
smoke in the nostrils, and heard loud voices from the Peel- 
town smack Lifting my eyes I could at first see nothing, for 
though the moon's light was in the sky the mist was still on 
the sea, and through it there seemed to roll slowly, for the 
wind was low, a tunnel of smoke like fog. Well 1 knew that 
something was amiss, and soon the mist lifted like a dark veil 
into the air, and the smoke veered, and a flash of red flame 
rose from the smack of the Peelmen. Then I saw that the 
boat was afire, and in two minutes more the silence of the sea 
was lost in the fire's loud hiss and the men's yet louder shouts. 
It was as if a serpent in the bowels of the boat struggled to 
make its way out, and long tongues of fire shot out of the 
scuttle, the hold, the combings and the flue of the stove. 
Little thought had 1 then of these things, though now by the 
eye of memory 1 see them, and also the sinuous trail of red 
water that seemed to crawl over the dark sea from the boat 
afire to the boat I sailed in. 1 had stepped my mast and 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


283 


hoisted sail before yet 1 knew what impulse possessed me, but 
with my hand on the tiller to go to the relief of the men in 
peril. On a sudden I was seized with a mighty fear, and it 
was as though a ghostly hand laid on me from behind, and a 
voice above the tumult of that moment seemed to cry in my 
ears, “Not for you, not for you.” Then in great terror 1 
turned my boat's head away from the burning smack, and as 
I did so the ghostly hand did relax and the voice did cease to 
peal in mine ears. 

“ They will drop into their dingy,” I said with myself. 
“ Yes,” 1 said, as the sweat started cold from my forehead, 
“they will drop into the dingy and be saved;” and turning 
my head I saw, by the flame of the fire, that over the bulwark 
at the stern two men were tumbling down into the small boat 
that they hauled behind. And I sped away in agony, for now 
I knew how deep was the wrath u23on me, that it was not for 
me so much as to stretch my accursed hand to perishing 
men to save them. Scarce had 1 gone a cable's length 
when a great shout, mingled with oaths, made me to turn my 
head, thinking the crew of the boat were crying curses down 
on me, not knowing me, for deserting them in their peril, but 
I was then in the tunnel of smoke wherein I might not be 
seen, and lo! I saw that the dingy with the two men was 
sheering off, and that other two of their mates were left on 
the burning boat. 

“ Haul the wind and run the waistrels down, d — n them,” 
shouted one of the two men on the smack, and amid the leap- 
ing flames the mainsail shot up and filled, and a man stood to 
the tiller, and with an oath he shouted to the two in the small 
boat that for their treachery they should go down to hell 
straightway. 

In the glare of that fierce light and the turmoil of that mo- 
ment my eyes grew dim, as they had been on the day of my 
cutting off, and I squeezed their lids together to relieve them 
of water. Then I saw how fearful a thing was going on 
within my cable's length. Two men of a crew of four in the 
burning smack had got themselves into the small boat and 
cleared off without thought of their comrades who were strug- 
gling to save their craft, and now the two abandoned men, 
doomed to near death in fire or water, were with their last 
power of life, and in life's last moments —for aught they could 
tell — thirsting for deadly vengeance. On the smack went, 
with its canvas bellied, and the flames shooting through and 
hissing over it, but just as it came by the small boat the men 
therein pulled to the windward and it shot past. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


^84 

Ere this was done, and while the smack’s bow was dead on 
for the dingy, I too had sheered round and was beating up 
after the burning boat, and when the men thereon saw me 
come up out of the smoke they ceased to curse their false 
comrades and made a great cry of thanks to God. At a dis- 
tance of six fathoms I laid to, thinking the men would plunge 
into the sea and come to me, but, apprehending my thoughts, 
one shouted me to come closer, for that he could not swim. 
Closer to the burning smack I would not go from fear of firing 
my own boat, and I dared not risk that fate wherein we might 
ali have been swallowed up together. For despair, that forti- 
fies some men, did make of me a coward, and I stood in con- 
stant terror of the coming death. So I stripped me of my 
jacket and leaped into the water and swam to the boat, and 
climbed its open combings as best I could through the flame 
and heat. On the deck the two men stood, enveloped in 
swirling clouds of smoke, but 1 saw them where they were, 
and pulling one into the water after me, the other followed 
us, and we reached my boat in safety. 

Then, as I rubbed my face, for the fire had burned one 
cheek, the men fell to thanking me in a shamefaced way — as 
in the manner of their kind, fearing to show feeling — when on 
a sudden they stopped short, for they had lifted their eyes, and 
in the flame of their boat had seen me, and at the same mo- 
ment 1 had looked upon them and known them. They were 
Illiarn Quilleash and Edward Teare, and they fell back from 
me and made for the bow, and stood there in silence together. 

Taking the tiller, I bore in by tacks for Port-le-Mary, and 
there 1 landed the men, who looked not my way nor ever 
spoke word or made sign to me, but went off with their heads 
down. And when I stood out again through the Poolvash to 
round the Spanish Head and make for my moorings in the 
sound, and saw the burning smack swallowed up by the sea 
with a groan that came over the still waters, its small boat 
passed me going into harbor, and the men who rowed it were 
Crennel and Corkell, and when they saw me they knew me, 
and made a broad sweep out of my course. Now all this time 
the ghostly hand had been on my shoulder, and the strange 
voice had pealed in mine ears, and though I wanted not to 
speak with any man, nor that any man should speak with me, 
yet I will not say but that it went to my heart that I should 
be like as a leper from whose uncleanness all men should 
shrink away. 

For many days hereafter this lay with a great trouble upon 
me, so that I let go my strong intent of walking into Castle- 


THE DEEMSTEB. 


285 


town at high fair, and put this question with myself, whether 
it was written that I should carry me though this world down 
to death’s right ending. Not as before did I now so deeply 
abhor myself; but felt for myself a secret compassion. Iu 
truth I had no bitterness left in my heart for my fellow-men, 
but, tossed with the fear that if I lived alone much longer 1 
must surely lose my reason, and hence my manhood, sinking 
down to the brute, this consideration fell with weight upon 
me. What thou hast suffered is from men who know thy 
crime, and stand in terror of the curse upon thee, wherein 
thou art so blotted out of the book of the living that without 
sin none may look thy way. Go therefore where no man 
knows thee, and the so heavy burden thou bearest will 
straightway fall from thee. Now, at this thought, my heart 
was full of comfort, and I went back to my former design of 
leaving this place forever. But before I had well begun what 
I was minded to do a strange accident befell me, and the rela- 
tion thereof is as followeth. 

By half flood of an evening late in autumn — for though the 
watch showed short of six the sun was already down — I left 
my old moorings inside the rocks of Kitterland, thinking to 
slip anchor there no more. The breeze was fresh in the 
sound, and outside it was stiff from the nor’-east, and so I 
ran out with a fair wind for Ireland, for I had considered with 
myself that to that country I would go, because the people 
there are tender of heart and not favored by God. For a short 
while I had enough to think of in managing my cordage, but 
when I was well away to sou’-west of the Calf suddenly the 
wind slackened. Then for an hour full 1 stood by the tiller 
with little to do, and looked back over the green waters to the 
purple mountains vanishing in the dusk, and around to the 
western sky, where over the line of sea the crimson streamers 
were still trailing where the sun had been, like as the radiance 
of a goodly life remains awhile after the man has gone. And 
with that eye that sees double, the thing that is without and 
that which is within, I saw myself then in my little craft on 
the lonely sea like an uncompanionable bird in the wide sky, 
and my heart began to fail me, and for the first time since my 
cutting off 1 must have wept. For 1 thought I was leaving 
forever the fair island of my home, with all that had made it 
dear in dearer days. Though it had turned its back on me 
since, and knew me no more, but had blotted out my name 
from its remembrance, yet it was mine, and the only spot of 
earth on all this planet — go whither I would — that I could 
call my own. How long this mood lasted I hardly can say ; 


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THE DEEMSTER. 


bat over the boat two gulls hovered or circled and cried, and 
1 looked up at their white transparent wings, for lack of better 
employment, until the light was gone and another day had 
swooned to another night. The wind came up with the dark- 
ness, and, more in heart than before, I stood out for the south 
of Ireland, and reached my old fishing port of Kin sale by the 
dawn of the next day. 

Then in the gentle sun of that autumn morning I walked 
up from the harbor to the market-place, and there found a 
strange company assembled about the inn, and in the midst 
were six or seven poor ship-broken men, shoeless, half-naked, 
and lean of cheek from the long peril and privation that eats 
the flesh and makes the eyes hollow. In the middle of the 
night they had come ashore on a raft, having lost their ship 
by foundering twelve days before. This I learned from the 
gossip of the people about them, and also that they had eaten 
supper at the inn and slept there. While I stood and looked 
on there came out in the midst of the group two other men, 
and one of them was their captain and the other the inn- 
keeper. And I noted well that the master of the inn was 
suave to his tattered customers, and spoke of breakfast as 
being made ready. 

“ But first go to the mayor,” said he, addressing the cap- 
tain, “ and make your protest, and he will lend whatever 
moneys you want . 3 3 

The captain, nothing loath, set out with a cheerful counte- 
nance for the mayor of the town, a servant of the inn going 
with him to guide him. The ship-broken crew stayed behind, 
and I, who was curious to learn if tbeir necessities would be 
relieved, remained standing in the crowd around them. And 
while we waited, and the men sat on the bench in front of the 
inn, there came down on them from every side the harpies 
that find sea-going men with clothes. There was one with 
coats and one with guernseys, and one with boots of leather 
and one of neat’s-skin, and with these things they made every 
man to fit himself. And if one asked the price, and protested 
that he had got no money, the Samaritans laughed and bade 
them not to think of price or money until their captain should 
return from the treasury of the mayor. The seamen took all 
with good cheer, and every man picked out what he wanted, 
and put it on, throwing his rags aside laughing. 

But presently the master of the crew returned, and his face 
was heavy; and when his men asked how he had fared, and if 
the mayor had advanced him anything, he told them No, and 
that the mayor had said he was no usurer to lend money. At 


THE DEEMSTER. 


287 


that there were groans and oaths from the crew, and looks of 
bewilderment among those who had fetched the 'clothes; but 
the innkeeper said all would be well, and that they had but to 
send for a merchant in the next street who made it his trade 
to advance money to ship-broken men. This news brought 
back the light to the dark face of the captain, and he sent the 
servant of the inn to fetch the merchant. 

When this man came my mind misgave, for I saw the stamp 
of uncharity in his face. But the captain told his story, 
whereof the sum was this: — That they were the English crew 
of the brig “ Betsey,” and were seven days out from Bristol, 
bound for Buenos Ayres, when they foundered on a rock, and 
had made their way thither on a raft, suffering much from 
hunger and the cold of the nights, and that they wanted three 
pounds advance on their owners to carry them to Dublin, 
whence they could sail for their own port. But the merchant 
curled his hard lip and said he had just before been deceived 
by strangers, and could not lend money except to men of 
whom he knew something; that they were strangers, and, 
moreover, by their own words entitled to no more than six 
days’ pay apiece. And so he went his way. 

Hardly had he gone when the harpies of the coats and boots 
and guernseys called on the men to strip off these good gar- 
ments, which straightway they rolled in their several bundles, 
and then elbowed themselves out of the crowd. The poor 
seamen, resuming their rags, were now in sad case, scarce 
knowing whether most to curse their misfortunes or to laugh 
at the grim turn that they were taking, when the captain, in 
a chafe, called on the innkeeper to give breakfast to his men, 
for that he meant to push on to the next town, where people 
might be found who had more humanity. But the innkeeper, 
losing his by-respects, shook his head, and asked where was his 
pay to come from for what he had already done. 

Now, when I heard this, and saw the men rise up to go on 
their toilsome way with naked, bleeding feet, suddenly I be- 
thought me that, though I had little money, I had what 
would bring money, and before I had taken time to consider I 
had whipped my watch from my fob to thrust it into the cap- 
tain’s hands. But when I would have parted the crowd to do 
so, on a sudden that same ghostly hand that I have before 
mentioned seemed to seize me from behind. Then on the 
instant I faced about to hasten away, for now the struggle 
within me was more than I could bear, and I stopped and 
went on, and stopped again and again went on, and all the 
time the watch was in my palm, and the ghostly hand on my 


288 


THE DEEMSTER. 


shoulder. At last, thinking sure that the memory of the 
seven sea-going men, hungry and ill-clad, would follow me, 
and rise up to torment me on land and sea, 1 wheeled around 
and ran back hot-foot and did as I was minded. Then I 
walked rapidly away from the market-place, and passing down 
to the harbor I saw a Peeltown fisherman, and knew that he 
saw me also. 

Now, I should have been exceeding glad if this thing had 
never befallen, for though it made my feeling less ungentle 
toward the two men, my old shipmates, who had turned from 
me as from a leper when I took them from the burning boat, 
yet it brought me to a sense that was full of terror to my op- 
pressed spirit, namely, that though I might fly to lands where 
men knew nothing of my great crime, yet that the curse 
thereof was mostly within mine own afflicted soul, from which 
I could never flee away. 

All that day I stayed in my boat, and the sun shone and the 
sky was blue, but my heart was filled with darkness. And 
when night fell in I had found no comfort, for then I knew 
that from my outcast state there was no escape. This being 
so, whether to go back to mine own island was now my ques- 
tion. Oh, it is a goodly thing to lie down in the peace of a 
mind at ease and rise up from the refreshment of the gentle 
sleep. But not for me was that blessed condition. The 
quaking of my spirit was more than I could well stand under 
without losing my reason, and in the fear of that mischance 
lay half the pain of life to me. Long were the dark hours, 
and when the soft daylight came again I did resolve that go 
back to my own island I would. For what was it to me 
though the world was wide if the little place I lived in was 
but my own narrow soul? 

That night in the boat for lack of the tick of my watch 
there seemed to be a void in the air of my cabin. But when 
the tide was about the bottom of the ebb I heard the plash of 
an oar alongside, and presently the sound of something that 
fell overhead. Next morning I found my watch lying on the 
deck, by the side of the hatches. 

At the top of the flood 1 lifted anchor and dropped down 
the harbor, having spoken no word to any man since I entered. 


CHAPTER XL. 

OF HIS GREAT LOMELIHESS. 

Back at my old moorings inside the rocks of Kitterland I 
knew full well that the Almighty Majesty was on this side of 


THE DEEMSTER. 


289 

me and on that, and I had nothing to look for now or here- 
after. But I think the extremity of my condition gave me 
some false courage, and my good genius seemed to say. What 
have you to lament? You have health and food, and free- 
dom, and you live under no task-master’s eye. Let the morn- 
ing see you rise in content, and let the night look on you lying 
down in thankfulness. And turn not your face to the future 
to the unsettling of your spirit, so that when your time comes 
you may not die with a pale face. Then did I laugh at my 
old yearning for fellowship, and asked wherefore I should be 
lonely since I lived in the same planet with other men, and 
had the same moon and stars above my sleep as hung over the 
busy world of men. In such wise did 1 comfort my tom 
heart, and shut it up from troubling me, but well I knew that 
I was like to one who cries peace where there is no peace, and 
that in all my empty sophistry concerning the moon and the 
stars there was no blood of poor human neighborliness. 

Nevertheless, I daily went about my businesses, in pur- 
suance whereof 1 walked up to the place over the Black Head 
where I had planted my corn and potatoes. These in their 
course I reaped and delved, cutting the barley and rye with 
my clasp-knife for sickle, and digging a burrow in the earth 
for my potatoes. Little of either I had, but enough for my 
frugal needs until more might grow. 

When my work was done, and I had no longer any employ- 
ment to take me ashore, the autumn had sunk to winter, for 
in this island of Man the cold and the mist come at a stride. 
Then sitting alone in my boat, with no task save such as I 
could make for myself, and no companion but little Veg-veen, 
the strength of the sophistry wherewith I had appeased myself 
broke down pitifully. The nights were long and dark, and 
the sun shone but rarely for many days together. Few were 
the ships that passed the mouth of the sound, either to east or 
west of it, and since my coming to moorage there no boat had 
crossed its water. Cold and bleak and sullen it lay around 
my boat, reflecting no more the forehead of the Calf, and lying 
now under the sunless sky like a dead man’s face that is 
moved neither to smiles nor tears. And an awful weariness of 
the sea came to me then, such as the loneliest land never 
brought to the spirit of a Christian man, for sitting on the 
deck of my little swaying craft, with the beat of the sea on 
its timbers, and the sea-fowl jabbering on Kitterland, and 
perhaps a wild colt racing the wind on the Calf, it came into 
my mind to think that as far as eye could see or ear could 
hear there was nothing around me but the hand of God. 


290 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Then all was darkness within me, and I did oft put the ques- 
tion to myself if it was possible for man to be with God alone 
and live. 

Now it chanced upon a day that I wanted potatoes out of 
my burrow over the Black Head, and that returning there- 
from toward nightfall I made a circuit of the stone circle 
above the Chasms, and the northernmost side of it, midway to 
Cregneesh, came on a sight that arrested my breath. This 
was a hut built against a steepness of rugged land from which 
stones had sometimes been quarried. The walls were of turf; 
the roof was of gorse and sticks, with a hole in it for chimney. 
Window there was none, and the door- way was half closed by a 
broken gate whereof the bars were intertwined with old straw. 

Mean it was, and desolate it looked on the wild moorland, 
but it was a mark of the hand of man, and I who had dwelt 
so long with God’s hand everywhere about me was touched 
with a sense of human friendliness. Hearing no voice within 
I crept up and looked into the little place. A bed of straw 
was in one corner, and facing it was a lump of freestone 
hollowed out for the bed of a fire. A broken pipe lay near 
this rude hearth, and the floor was of mountain turf worn bare 
and hard. Two sacks, a kettle, a saucepan, and some potato- 
parings were the only other things in the hut, and poor as it 
all was it touched me so that in looking upon it I think my 
eyes were wet, because it was a man’s habitation. I remember 
that as 1 turned to go away the rain began to fall, and the 
pattering drops on the roof seemed to my eye and ear to make 
the place more human. 

In going back to my boat that day I came nearer to Creg- 
neesh than was my wont in the daytime, and though the dark- 
ness was coming down from the mountains I could yet see into 
the streets from the knoll I passed over. And there in the 
unpaved way before a group of houses 1 saw a witless man in 
coat and breeches, but no vest or shirt, and with a rope about 
his waist, dancing and singing to a little noisy crowd gathered 
about him. 

After that I had come upon the hut my mind ran much on 
the thought of it, and in three days or thereabouts 1 went 
back to look at it again, and coming near to it from behind 
saw sundry beehives of a rude fashioning made of straw and 
sticks, veg-veen was with me, for he was now my constant 
company, and in a moment he had bounced in at the door-way 
and out again at yet more speed, with three of his kind close 
at his tail. Before I could turn me about to go away a man 
followed the dogs out of the hut, and he was the same witless 


THE DEEMSTER. 


291 


being that I had seen at his dancing in the streets of Creg- 
neesh. His lip lagged low and his eyes were dull as a rabbit's; 
on his head was a crownless hat through which his hair was 
seen, and 1 saw that his breast, where his shirt should be, was 
blackened as with soot. I would have gone about my own 
employments but he spoke, telling me not to fear him, for it 
was false that he was possessed, as hard-spoken people said, 
with the spirit of delusion. I answered nothing to this, but 
stood and listened with eyes turned aside, while the broken 
brain of the poor creature rambled on. 

“ They call me Billy the Bees/' he said, “ because I catch 
them and wear them — look,” and he pointed to his hives. He 
talked of his three dogs and named them, saying that they 
slept in a sack together, and that in the same sack he slept 
with them. Something he said of the cold that had been 
coming latterly, and pointed to the soot on his breast, saying 
that it kept him warm. He told how he made a circuit of the 
farm-houses once a week, dancing and singing at all of them, 
and how the people gave him barley-meal and eggs. Much 
more he said, but because the method of it — where method 
there was any — has gone from my memory 1 pass it. That 
the world was nigh about its end he knew of a surety, because 
he saw that if a man had money and great store of gear it 
mattered not what else he wanted. These with other such 
words he spoke ramblingly, and I stood aside and answered 
him nothing, neither did I look up into his face. At last he 
said timidly, “ I know 1 have always been weak in my intel- 
lects," and hearing that I could bear to hear no more, but 
went about my business with a great weight of trouble upon 
me. And “ Oh God,” I cried that night in my agony, “ I 
am an ignorant sot, without the grace of human tenderness, 
or the gift of understanding. I am guilty before Thee, and 
no man careth for my soul, but from this affliction, oh 
Almighty Master, save me; save me from this degradation, 
for it threatens me, and when death comes that stands at the 
foot of life's awful account I will pay its price with thankful- 
ness.” 

Now after this meeting with the witless man the weariness 
that I had felt of my home on the sea lay the heavier on my 
spirits, and I concluded with myself that I should forsake my 
boat and build me a home on the land within sight of man's 
habitation. So I walked the cliffs from the Mull Hills to the 
Noggin Head, and at last I lit on the place I looked for. 
Near to the land where I had lately broken the fallows and 
grown me a crop of corn and potatoes there were four roofless 


292 


THE DEEMSTER. 


walls. Sometime a house had stood there, but being built on 
the brink of the great clefts in the earth that we call the 
Chasms it had shrunken in some settlement of the ground. 
This had affrighted the poor souls who inhabited it, and they 
had left it to fall into ruins. Such was the tale I heard long 
afterward, but none came near it then, and none have come 
near to it since. Save the four bare walls, and a wall that 
crossed it midway, nothing was left. Where the floor had 
been the grass was growing; wormwood was in the settle 
nook, and whinberries had ripened and rotted on the hearth. 
The door lintel was gone, and the sill of the window was fallen 
off. There was a round patch of long grass where the well 
had been, and near to where the porch once stood the 
tramm on-tree still grew, and thus, though the good people 
who had lived and died there, been bom and buried, were 
gone from it forever, the sign of their faith, or their super- 
stition, lived after them. 

Better for me than this forsaken place it was hard for any 
place to be. On a dangerous spot it stood, and therefore none 
would come anigh it. Near to Cregneesh it was, and from the 
rising ground above it I could look down on the homes of men. 
Truly it looked out on the sea, and had a great steepness of 
shelving rocks going down to .an awesome depth, where, on 
the narrow beach of shingle, the tide beat with a woful moan; 
but though the sea was so near, and the sea-fowl screamed of 
an evening from the great rock like a cone that lifted its gaunt 
finger a cable’s length away, yet to me it was within the very 
pulse of human life. 

So I set to work, and roofed it with driftwood and turf and 
gorse; and then with lime from a cliff at the Tubdale Creek 
in the Calf I whitened it within and without, walls and roof. 
A door I made in somewise, and for a window I had a piece of 
transparent skiu, having no glass. And when all was made 
ready I moved my goods from the boat to my house, taking 
all that seemed necessary — flour, and meat, and salt, and my 
implements, as well as my bed and the spare clothes I had, 
which were not many. 

1 had been in no haste with this work, being well content 
with such employment, but it came to an end at last, and the 
day that I finished my task was a day late in the first year 
after my cutting off. This I knew because the nights were 
long, and I had been trying with my watch to cast on the 
shortest day, and thereby recover my lost count of lime. On 
the night of my first sleeping in my new home there came a 
fierce storm of wind and rain from the east. Four hours the 


THE DEEMSTER. 


293 


gale lasted, and often the gulls were dashed screaming at the 
walls wherein I sat by the first fire I had yet kindled on my 
hearth. Toward midnight the wind fell suddenly to a dead 
calm, and, looking out, I saw that the moon was coming very 
bright in its rising from behind a heavy cloud over the sea. 
So, wondering what chance had befallen" my boat — for though 
I had left it I had a tenderness for it and meant perchance to 
use it again — I set out for the sound. When I got to the head 
of the cliff I could plainly see the rocks of Kitterland, and the 
whole length of the Doon Creek, but where my boat had been 
moored no boat could I see, nor any trace of one from Fistard 
Head on the east to Half- Walk Rock on the west. Next 
morning, under a bright winter’s sun, 1 continued the search 
for my boat, and with the rising tide at noon I saw her thrown 
up on to the beach of the Doon, dismasted, without spar or 
boom, bilged below her water-line, and altogether a hopeless 
hulk. I made some scabbling shift to pull her above high- 
water mark, and then went my ways. 

Now this loss, for so I considered it, did at first much de- 
press me, thinking, with a bitter envy of my late past, that 
my future showed me a far more unblessed condition, seeing 
that I was now forever imprisoned on this island, and could 
never leave it again whatsoever evil might befall. But when 
I had thought twice upon it my mind came to that point that 
I was filled with gratitude: first, because the wrecking of my 
boat on the very day of my leaving it seemed to give assurance 
that, in making my home on the land, I had done that which 
was written for me to do; and next, because 1 must inevitably 
have been swallowed up in the storm if I had stayed on the 
sea a single night longer. And my terror of death was such 
that to have escaped the peril of it seemed a greater blessing 
than releasement from this island could ever be. 

Every day thereafter, and oftenest at day-break, I walked 
up to the crest of the rising ground at the back of my house, 
and stood awhile looking down on Cregneesh, and watching 
for the white smoke that lay like a low cloud over the hollow 
place wherein Port Erin lay. After I had done this I 
felt strangely refreshed as by a sense of companionship, and 
went about my work, such as it was, with content. But on a 
bitter morning, some time in December, as 1 thought, I came 
upon a sight that well-nigh froze my heart within me, for, 
outstretched on the bare moorland, under the bleak sky and 
in the lee of a thick gorse bush tipped with yellow, I found 
the witless man, Billy the Bees, lying cold and dead. His 
bare chest was blue, as with starvation, under the soot where- 


294 


THE DEEMSTER. 


with in his simpleness he had blackened it, and his pinched 
face told of privation and of pain. And now that he lay 
stretched out dead I saw that he had been a man of my own 
stature. In his hut, which was further away than my own 
house from the place where he lay, there was neither bite nor 
sup, and his dogs seemed to have deserted him in his poverty, 
for they were gone. The air had softened perceptibly for 
some minutes while I went thither, and as I returned to the 
poor body, wondering what to do with it, the snow began to 
fall in big flakes. “ It will cover it,” I said with myself. 
“ The snow will bury it,” I thought; and casting a look back 
over my shoulder, 1 went home with a great burden of trouble 
upon me. 

All that day, and two other days, the snow continued to 
fall, until the walls of my house were blocked up to the level 
of my window, and I had to cut a deep trench to the gable 
where I piled my wood. And for more than a week following, 
shut in from my accustomed walk, I sat alone in the great 
silence and tried to keep my mind away from the one fearful 
thought that now followed it. Remembering those long hours 
and the sorry employments 1 found for them — scrabbling on 
all-fours in play with Millish veg-veen, laughing loud, and 
barking back at the dog’s shrill bark, I could almost weep 
while here 1 write to think of the tragic business that was at 
the same time lying heavy on my spirit. Christmas-day fell 
while thus I was imprisoned, for near to midnight I heard the 
church bells ring for Oiel Verree. 

When the snow began to melt I saw that the dog put his 
muzzle to the bottom of the door instantly, and as often as I 
drove him away he returned to the same place. 1 will not say 
what awful thing came then to my mind, knowing a dog’s 
nature, and how near to my door lay the body of the witless 
man; only that 1 shuddered with a fear that was new to me 
when 1 remembered that, by the curse I lived under, the time 
would come when my unburied bones would lie cn the bare 
face of the moor. 

As soon as the snow had melted down to within a foot’s 
depth of the earth 1 went out of my house and turned toward 
where my poor neighbor lay; but before I had come close to 
him I saw that three men were coming over the liill-side by 
way of Port-le-Mary, and, wishing not to be seen by them, 1 
crept back and lay by the hinder wall of my house to watch 
what they did. Then I saw that they came up to the body of 
the witless man and saw it, and stood over it some minutes 
talking earnestly, and then passed along on their way. And 



I sat alone in the great silence . — Page 2Q4 \ 























































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THE DEEMSTER. 


295 


as they walked they turned aside and came (dose up by the 
front of my house, and looked in at the window, pushing the 
skin away. Standing by the wall, holding Veg-veen by the 
throat lest he should betray me, I heard some words the men 
said each to the other before they went on again. 

“ Well, man, he’s dead at last, poor craythur,” said one, 
“ and good luck too.” 

And the other answered, “ Aw, dear, to think, to think! 
No man alive could stand up agen it. Aw, ter’ble, ter’ble!” 

“ I was at the Tynwald myself yander day,” said the first, 
“ and I’ll give it a year, I was saying, to finish him, and be- 
hould ye, lie’s lying dead in half the time.” 

Then both together said, “ God bless me!” and passed on. 

At that moment my eyes became dim, and a sound as of 
running water went through my ears. I staggered into my 
house, and sat down by the cold hearth, for in my eagerness 
to go forth on my errand at first awakening no fire had I 
kindled. I recalled the words that the men had spoken, and 
repeated them aloud one by one, and very slowly, that I might 
be sure I took their meaning rightly. This done, I said with 
myself, “ This error will go far, until the wide island will say 
that he who was cut off, he who is nameless among men, is 
dead.” Dead? What then? I had heard that when death 
came and took away a bad man, its twin-angel, the angel of 
mercy, bent over those who were left behind on the earth, and 
drew out of their softened hearts all evil reports and all un- 
charity. 

And a great awe slid over me at that thought, and the 
gracious dew of a strange peace fell upon me. But close be- 
hind it came the other thought, that this error would reach 
my father also — God preserve him! — and Mona — God’s holy 
grace be with her! — and bring them pain. And then it came 
to me to think that when men said in their hearing, “ He 
whom you wot of is newly dead,” they would take heart and 
answer, “ No, he died long ago; it was only his misery and 
God’s wrath that died yesterday.” 

With this thought I rose up and went out, and put some 
shovels of earth over the body of my poor neighbor that his 
face might be hidden from the sky. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

OF HOW HE KEPT HIS MANHOOD. 

The great snow lay long on the mountains and died oft in 
its silence like one who passes away in sleep. And the spring 


296 


THE DEEMSTER. 


came, the summer and the winter } 7 et again, and to set dowir 
in this writing all that befell would be a weariness, for 1 fee) 
as I write that the pulse of my life is low; and neither am 1 
one who can paint his words with wit. My way of life has 
now grown straight and even, and at my simple employments 
I wrought early and late, that by much bodily toil I might 
keep in check the distempers of my mind. 

With my fishing-boat, my gun, which 1 had left behind me 
of design, had been carried to the bottom of the sound, and 
when the hulk of the lugger drifted up with the tide the gun 
was no longer within her. This I took for a direction to me 
that I should hunt no more. Nevertheless, for some while 1 
went on to fish with a line from my small boat, which, being 
on the beach, the storm had spared. But soon it was gotten 
into my head that, if to shoot a hare was an ill deed, to take a 
cod was but a poor business. Well I knew that there was 
some touch of insanity in such fancies, and that for man to 
kill and eat was the law of life, and the rather because it was 
enjoined of God that so he should do. But being a man like 
as I was, cut off from the land of the living, never more to 
have footing there for the great crime committed of spilling 
blood, 1 think it was not an ungentle madness that made me 
fear to take life, whether wantonly or of hunger’s need. This 
dread lay close to me, and got to extremities whereat one of 
healthy mind might smile. For being awakened some nights 
in succession by the nibble of a mouse, I arose from my bed in 
the dawn, and saw the wee mite, and struck it with an iron 
rod and killed it, and then suffered many foolish twitches, not 
from pity for the mouse, for of humanity I had none left, but 
from the sudden thought that the spirit of its life, which I 
had driven from its harmless body, was now about me as an 
invisible thing. Though I had fallen into such a weakness, 
yet 1 think that where choice was none for one like me be- 
tween the weakness of a man and the strength of a beast, I 
did least injury to my own nature and disposition by yielding 
with childish indulgence toward the gentler side. 

And truly it is a beautiful thing to mark how the creatures 
of earth and air will answer with confidence to man’s tender- 
ness, whether, as with my saintly father, it comes of the love 
of them, or, as with me, of the love of myself. The sea-fowl 
flew in at my door and pecked up the morsels that fell at my 
feet. 

The wild duck on the moor would not rise though I 
walked within a stride of it; a fat hare nested in a hole under 
my house and came out at dusk, and, but for Millish veg-veen 


THE DEEMSTER. 297 

and bis sly treacheries, with the rabbits of the Black Head 1 
might have sported as with a kitten. 

I could fill this account with the shifts I was put to by want 
of many things that even a lone man may need for his comfort 
or his cheer. Thus, I was at pains to devise a substitute for 
tinder, having lost much of all I had in the wrecking of my 
boat; and to find leather for the soles of my shoes when they 
were worn to the welt was long a search. 

Yet herein my case was but that of many another man who 
has told of his privation, and the less painful was my position 
for that 1 had much to begin my battle of life with. In this 
first year of my unblessed condition my senses not only re- 
covered their wonted strength, but grew keener than before 
my cutting off. Oft did my body seem to act without help of 
my intelligence, and, with a mind on other matters, I would 
find my way over the trackless moor back to my home in the 
pitch of darkness, and never so much as stumble by a stone. 
When the wind was from the north, or when the air lay still, 
I could hear the church bells that rang in the market square 
at Castletown, and thereby 1 knew what the day of the week 
was. Hone came nigh to my dwelling, but if a man passed it 
by at the space of two furlongs I seemed to feel his tread on 
the turf. 

And now, as I hold the pen for these writings, my hand is 
loath and my spirit is not fain to tell of the strange humors of 
these times. So ridiculous and yet so tragic do they look as 
they come back to me in the grave-clothes of memory, that 
my imagination, being no longer turned wayward, shrinks 
from them as sorry things that none shall see to be of nature 
save he who has lived in an outcast state. But if the eyes I 
look for should ever read these lines, the tender soul behind 
them will bring me no laughter for my pains, and I ask no 
tears. Only for my weakness let it be remembered that the 
terror of my life was that the spirit of madness and of the 
beast of the field waited and watched to fall upon me and to 
destroy the spirit of the man within me. 

It is not to be expressed with what eagerness I strove to live 
in my solitude as a man should live in the company of his fel- 
lows. Down to the pettiest detail of personal manners I tried 
to do as other men must be doing. Whatsoever seemed to be 
the habit of a Christian man that I practiced, and (though all 
alone and having no man's eye to see me) with a grim and 
awesome earnestness. Thus before food, I not only washed 
but dressed afresh, taking off the sea-boots or the curranes I 


298 


THE DEEMSTER. 


worked in, and putting on my shoes with silver buckles. My 
seaman’s jacket I removed for a long coat of blue, and I was 
careful that my shirt was spotless. In this wise I also never 
failed to attire myself- in the evening of the day for the short 
hours of rest between my work and my bed. That my cheeks 
should be kept clean of hair and that the hair of my head 
should never outgrow itself was a constant care, for I stood in 
fear of the creeping consciousness which my face in the glass 
might bring me that I was other than other men. But I am 
loath to set down my little foolish formalities on sitting to 
meat and rising from it, and the silly ceremonies wherewith I 
indulged myself at going abroad and coming home. Inex- 
pressibly comic and ridiculous some of them would seem to 
me now, but for the tragic meaning that in my terror under- 
lay them. And remembering how much a defaulter 1 had 
been in all such courtesies of life when most they were called 
for, I could almost laugh to think how scrupulous I was in 
their observance when I was quite alone, with never an eye to 
see me, what I did or how I was clad, or in what sorry fashion 
I in my solitude acquitted myself like a man. 

But though I could be well disposed to laugh at my notions 
of how to keep my manhood while compelled to live the life 
of a beast, alone like a wolf and useless for any purposes of 
man or the world, it is not with laughter that 1 recall another 
form of the insanity that in these times possessed me. This 
was the conviction that I was visited by Ewan, Mona, and my 
father. Madness I call it, but never did my pulse beat more 
temperately or my brain seem clearer than when conscious of 
these visitations. If I had spent the long day delving, or 
gathering limestone on the beach of the sound, and returned 
to my house at twilight, I would perhaps be suddenly aware 
as I lifted the latch — having thought only of my work until then 
— that within my kitchen these three sat together, and that 
they turned their eyes to me as I entered. Nothing would be 
more convincing to my intelligence than that I actually saw 
what I say, and yet I always seemed to know that it was not 
with my bodily eyes that I was seeing. These indeed were 
open, and 1 was broad awake, with plain power of common 
sight on common things — my stool, my table, the settle 1 had 
made myself, and perhaps the fire of turf that burned red on 
the hearth. But over this bodily vision there was a spiritual 
vision more stable than that of a dream, more soft and varia- 
ble than that of material reality, in which I clearly beheld 
Ewan and Mona and my father, and saw their eyes turn to- 
ward me. Madness it may have been, but I could say it at the 


THE DEEMSTER. 


299 


foot of the White Throne that what I speak of I have seen not 
once or twice, but many times. 

And well I remember how these visitations affected me: 
first as a terror, for when on a sudden they came to me as I 
lifted the latch I would shrink back and go away again, and 
return to my house with trembling; and then as a strange 
comfort, for they were a sort of silent company in my deso- 
lation. More than once, in these days of great loneliness, did 
1 verily believe that 1 had sat me down in the midst of the 
three to spend a long hour in thinking of the brave good things 
that might have been for all of us but for my headstrong 
passion, helped out by the cruel tangle of our fate. 

One thing I noted that even yet seems strange in the hours 
when my imagination is least given to waywardness. Through- 
out the period wherein I lived in the boat, and for some time 
after I removed me to my house, the three I have named 
seemed to visit me together; but after that I had found my 
witless neighbor lying dead on the moor, and after that I had 
heard the converse of the men who mistook his poor body for 
my own, the visitations of Mona and my father ceased alto- 
gether, and Ewan alone did I afterward seem to see. This I 
pondered long, and at length it fastened on me with a solemn 
conviction that what 1 had looked for had come about, and 
that the error that I was a dead man had reached the ears of 
my father and Mona. With Ewan 1 sat alone when he came 
to me, and oft did it appear that we were loving company, for 
in his eyes were looks of deep pity, and I on my part had 
ceased to rail at the blind passion that had parted us flesh 
from flesh. 

These my writings are not for men who will look at such 
words as I have here set down with a cold indifferency, or my 
hand would have kept me back from this revelation. But 
that 1 saw apparently what 1 have described is as sure before 
God as that I was a man cut off from the land of the living. 

A more material sequel came of the finding of the body on 
the moor. I was so closely followed by a dread of a time that 
was coming when 1 must die, and stretch out my body on the 
bare ground with no man to give it Christian burial in the 
earth, that 1 could take no rest until I had devised a means 
whereby this terror might not haunt me in my last hours. In 
front of my house there were, as I have said, the places we 
call the Chasms, wherein the rock of this hungry coast is 
honeycombed into a hundred deep gullies by the sea. One of 
these gullies I descended by means of a cradle of rope swung 
overthwart a strong log of driftwood, and there I found a long 


300 


THE DEEMSTER. 


shelf of stone, a deep fissure in the earth, a tomb of shelving 
rock coated with fungus and mold, whereto no dog could 
come, and wherein no bird of prey could lift its wing. To 
this place I resolved that 1 would descend when the power of 
life was on the point of ebbing away. Having lowered myself 
by my cradle of rope, 1 meant to draw the cordage after me, 
and then, being already near my end, to lie down in this close 
gully under the earth, that was to serve me for grave and 
death-bed. 

But 1 was still a strong man, and, ungracious as my con- 
dition was, 1 shrunk from the thought of death, and did what 
I could to put by the fear of it. Never a day did 1 fail to 
walk to the crest of the rising ground behind me and look 
down to where in the valley lay the habitations of men. Life, 
life, life, was now the constant cry of the voice of my heart, 
and a right goodly thing it seemed to me to be alive, though 1 
might be said not to live, but only to exist. 

Whether from the day whereon I heard the converse of the 
two men who went by my house I was ever seen of any man 
for a twelvemonth or more I scarce can tell. Great was my 
care to keep out of the ways wherein even the shepherds 
walked, and never a foot seemed to come within two furlongs 
of these abandoned parts from the bleak Black Head to the 
margin of the sound. But it happened upon a day toward 
winter, beginning the second year since my cutting off, that I 
turned toward Port-le-Mary, and walking on with absent 
mind, came nearer than I had purposed to the village over 
the Kallow Point. There I was suddenly encountered by four 
or five men who, much in liquor, were playing at leap-frog 
among the gorse. English seamen they seemed to be, and 
perhaps from the brig that some time before I had noted 
where she lay anchored to the lea of the Carrick Rock in the 
Poolvash below. At sight of them I was for turning quickly 
aside, but they raised such a cry and shot out such a volley of 
levities and blasphemies that try how I would to go on I could 
not but stop on the instant and turn my face to them. 

Then 1 saw that of me the men took no note whatever, and 
that all their eyes were on my dog Millish veg-veen, who was 
with me, and was now creeping between my feet with his 
stump of a tail under his belly, and his little cunning face full 
of terror. “Why, here's the dog that killed our monkey," 
said one, and another shouted, “It's my old cur, sure 
enough," and a third laughed and said he had kept a rod in 
pickle for more than a year, and the first cried again “ I'll 
teach the beast to kill no more Jackeys." Then, before I 


THE DEEMSTER. 


301 


was yet fully conscious of what was being done, one of the 
brawny swaggerers made toward us and kicked at the dog 
with the fierce lunge of a heavy seaman’s boot. The dog 
yelped and would have made off, but another of the blusterers 
kicked him back, and then a third kicked him, and whatever 
way he tried to escape between them one of them lifted his 
toot and kicked again. While they were doing this I felt my- 
self struggling to cry out to them to stop, but not a syllable 
could I utter, and, like a man paralyzed, I stood stock-still, 
and did nothing to save my housemate and only companion in 
life. At length one of the men, laughing a great roistering 
laugh, stooped and seized the dog by the nape of the neck and 
swung him round in the air. Then I saw the poor cur’s 
piteous look toward me, and heard its bitter cry; but at the 
next instant it was flying ten feet above our heads, and when 
it fell to the ground it was killed on the instant. 

At that sight I heard an awful groan burst from my mouth, 
and I saw a cloud of fire flash before my eyes. When next I 
knew what I was doing I was holding one of tbe men by a 
firece grip about the waist, and was swinging him high above 
my shoulders. 

Now if the good God had not given me back my conscious- 
ness at that moment I know full well that at the next he who 
was then in my power would have drawn no more the breath 
of a living man. But 1 felt on a sudden the same ghostly 
hand upon me that I have written of before, and heard the 
same ghostly voice in mine ear. So, dropping the man gently 
to his feet, as gently as a mother might slip her babe to its 
cot, I lifted up my poor mangled beast by its hinder legs and 
turned away with it. And as 1 went the other men fell apart 
from me with looks of terror, for they saw that God had willed 
it that, with an awful strength, should I, a man of great 
passions, go through life in peril. 

When I had found coolness to think of this that had hap- 
pened I mourned for the loss of the only companion that had 
ever shared with me my desolate state; but more than my 
grief for the dog was my fear for myself, remembering with 
horror that when I would have called on the men to desist I 
could not utter one word. Truly, it may have been the swift 
access of anger that then tied my tongue, but I could not 
question that my sudden speechlessness told me I was losing 
the faculty of speech. This conclusion fastened upon me with 
great pain, and I saw that for a twelvemonth or more 1 had 
been zealously preserving the minor qualities of humanity, 
while this its greatest faculty, speech, that distinguishes man 


302 


THE DEEMSTER. 


from the brute, had been silently slipping from me. Preserve 
my power of speech also I resolved I would, and though an 
evil spirit within me seemed to make a mock at me, and to 
say, “ Wherefor this anxiety to keep your speech, seeing that 
you will never require it, being a man cut off forever from all 
intercourse with other men?” yet I held to my purpose. 

Then I asked myself how I was to preserve my speech save 
by much and frequent speaking, and how 1 was to speak having 
none — not even my dog now — to speak to. For to speak con- 
stantly with myself was a practice I shrunk from as leading 
perchance to madness, since I had noted that men of broken 
wit were much given to mumbling vain words to themselves. 
At last I concluded that there was but one way for me, and that 
was to pray. Having lighted on this thought I had still some 
misgivings, for the evil spirit within me again made a mock 
at me, asking why I should speak to God, being a man out- 
side God's grace, and why 1 should waste myself in the mis- 
spent desire of prayer, seeing that the Heavenly Majesty had 
set His face from me in rejecting the atonement of my life 
which I had offered for my crime. But after great inward 
strivings I came back to my old form of selfishness, and was 
convinced that though when I prayed God would not hear me, 
yet that the yearning and uplooking of prayer might be a good 
thing for the spiritual part of my nature as a man — for when 
was the beast known to pray? 

At this I tried to recall a few good words such as my father 
used, and at length, after much beating of the wings of my 
memory, 1 remembered some that were the words of Bishop 
Jeremy Taylor, and did betake myself to prayer in this 
manner: “Oh, most gracious God, I tremble to come into 
Thy presence, so polluted and dishonored as I am by my foul 
stain of sin which I have contracted; but I must come or 1 
perish. I am useless to any purposes of God and man, and, 
like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and neces- 
sities of the world, living only to spend my time, and, like a 
vermin, eat of the fruits of the earth. Oh, my God, I can 
not help it now; miserable man that I am, to reduce myself 
to so sad a state that 1 neither am worthy to come to Thee nor 
dare I stay from Thee. The greatness of my crime brings me 
to my remedy; and now 1 humbly pray Thee to be merciful 
to my sin, for it is great.” 

And thi ’ prayer I spoke aloud twice daily thenceforward, at 
the rising and the setting of the sun, going out of my house 
and kneeling on the turf on the top of the Black Head. And 
when I had prayed I sung what I could remember of the 


THE DEEMSTER. 303 

psalm that runs, “It is good for me that I have been in 
trouble that I may learn Thy statutes.” 

In my mind's eye 1 see myself a solitary man in that lone 
place, with the sea stretching wide below me, and only the 
sound of its heavy beat on the rocks rising over me in the 
quiet air. 


CHAPTER XL1I. 

OF THE BREAKING OF THE CURSE. 

Thus far have I written these four days past, amid pain 
and a quick lessening of the powers of life. In sleepless hours 
of the night 1 have made this writing, sitting oftenest by the 
light of my feeble candles until the day has been blue over the 
sea. And now that I glance back and see my own heart in 
the mirror 1 have made for it, I am like to one who has been 
brought through a fearsome sickness, that has left its marks 
upon him, to look for the first time at his altered face in the 
glass. And can it be that I, who have penned these words, 
am the man of seven years ago? Ah, now I see how profound 
has been the change that my great punishment has made in 
me, and perceive the end of God in refusing my poor atone- 
ment of life for life, and cutting me off from among men. 

I will not say that what I have already written has not cost 
me some pangs, and perhaps some tears. But now I am come 
to that place where 1 must tell of the great turning-point in 
my sad state, and though the strength fails me wherewith I 
hold the pen to write of it, my spirit rises before it like as the 
lark awakened by the dawn. 

This year— surely the darkest within the memory of our 
poor people of Man — began with more than its share of a 
winter of heavy rains. The spring that followed was also 
rainy, and when 1 looked for the summer to begin, the rains 
were still incessant. Heavy and sodden was the ground even 
of the moor whereon I lived, so that my feet sunk into it as 
into a morass, and much of the seed I sowed was washed from 
it and wasted. When at length the long rains ceased to fall 
the year was far worn into June, and then the sun came quick 
and hot. My house stood on a brow descending to the cliffs 
of the coast, and beneath me were less than two feet of mold 
above the rock, but when the great heat came after the great 
rain, out of the ground there arose a thick miasmic mist that 
filled the air, obscured the light, lay heavy in sweat upon my 
hair and flesh, and made the walls and floor, the furniture 


304 


THE DEEMSTER. 


and the bed of my home, damp and dripping with constant 
dew. 

Quickly I set myself to the digging of deep trenches that 
went vertically down the brow to the cliff head, and soon the 
ground about me across many acres was drained dry. But 
though I lived in a clear air, and could now see the sun as well 
as feel it, yet I perceived that the mists stood in a wide half 
circle around me like walls of rain seen afar, while the spot 
whereon you stand is fair and in the sunshine. In my daily 
walks to the top of the moor I could no longer see the houses 
of Cregneesh for the cloud of vapor that lay over it, and when 
I walked to the Kallow Head for the first time since the day I 
lost my dog, the basin below, where Port-le-Mary stands, was 
even as a vast vaporous sea, without one islet of house or hill. 

My health suffered little from this unaccustomed humidity, 
for my bodily strength was ever wonderful; but my spirits 
sunk to a deep depression, and oft did I wonder how the poor 
souls must fare who lived on the low, wet curraghs near to 
where my own home once lay. From day to day, and week to 
week, the mist continued to rise from the dank ground under 
the hot sun, and still the earth came up in thick clods to the 
spade. 

The nights alone were clear, and toward midsummer I was 
witness to strange sights in the heavens. Thus I saw a comet 
pass close across the island from coast to coast, with a visible 
motion as of quivering flame. What this visitation could 
foretell I pondered long and sadly, and much I hungered for 
knowledge of what was being down in the world of men. But 
therein it seemed to my wayward mind that I was like a man 
buried in the church-yard while he is yet alive, who hears the 
bell in the tower that peals and tolls, but has no window in 
his tomb from which to see who comes to rejoice, and who to 
mourn. 

When the fleet of fishing-boats should have put out from 
Port Erin for the ground that lies south of the Calf, scarce a 
sail could I see, and not a boat had I noted coming from the 
Poolvash where Port-le-Mary stands above the bay. From the 
top of the Mull Hills I could faintly descry the road to Castle- 
town, but never a cart on market-day seemed to pass over it. 
Groups of people 1 vaguely saw standing together, and once, 
at midday, from the middle of a field of new-mown hay, 
there came to me the sounds of singing and prayer. Oftener 
than at any period during my solitary life I saw men on the 
mountains or felt their presence near me, for my senses were 
grown very keen. Oftener, also, than ever before, the sound 


THE DEEMSTER. 


305 


of church bells seemed to come through the air. And going 
to the beach where my shattered boat lay, I one day came 
upon another boat beating idly down the waters of the sound, 
her sails flapping in the wind, and no hand at her tiller. I 
stood to watch while the little craft came drifting on with the 
flow of the tide. She ran head on to the cliff at Fistard, and 
then I went down to her, and found never a living soul aboard 
of her. 

From these and other startling occurrences that came to me 
vaguely, as if by the one sense of the buried man, I felt that 
with the poor people of this island all was not well. But 
nothing did I know of a certainty until a day toward the 
first week of September — as I have reckoned it — and then a 
strange thing befell. 

The sun was not shining, and when there was no sun there 
was little mist. A. strong wind, too, had got up from the 
north-east, and the atmosphere over land and sea grew clearer 
as the day wore on. The wind strengthened after the turn of 
the ebb, and at half flood, which was toward three in the 
afternoon, it had risen to the pitch of a gale, w r ith heavy 
swirling rain. The rain ceased in a few hours, and in the lift 
of the heavy clouds I could see from the rising ground above 
my house a brig with shortened sail toiling heavily to the 
south-west of the Calf. She was struggling in the strong 
currents that flow there to get into the lea of the island, but 
was beaten back and back, never catching the shelter of the 
cliffs for the rush of the wind that swept over them. The 
darkness was falling in while 1 watched her, and when she 
was swept back and hidden from me by the forehead of the 
Calf I turned my face homeward. Then I noticed that on the 
top of the Mull Hills a great company of people had gathered, 
and I thought I saw that they were watching the brig that 
was laboring heavily in the sea. 

That night 1 had close employment at my fireside, for I was 
finishing a coat that I had someways fashioned with my un- 
deft fingers from the best pieces of many garments that of 
themselves would no longer hold together. Rough as a monk’s 
long sack it was, and all but as shapeless, but nevertheless ? 
fit companion for the curranes on my feet, which I had made 
some time before from the coat of my hapless Millish veg-veen. 

While I wrought with my great sail-maker’s needle and 
twine, the loud wind moaned about the walls of my house and 
whistled through its many crevices, and made the candle 
whereby I worked to flicker and gutter. Yet my mind was 


306 


THE DEEMSTER. 


more cheerful than had lately been its wont, and I sung tc 
myself with my face to the glow of the fire. 

But when toward ten o'clock the sea below sent up a louder 
hiss than before, followed by a deeper under-groan, suddenly 
there was a clash at my window, and a poor, panting sea-mew, 
with open beak, came through it and fell helpless on the floor. 
I picked up the storm-beaten creature, and calmed it, and 
patched with the needle the skin of the window which it had 
broken by its entrance. 

Then all at once my mind went back to the brig laboring in 
the sea behind the Calf. Almost at the same moment, and 
for the first time these seven years, a quick knock came to my 
door. I was startled, and made no answer, but stood stock- 
still in the middle of the floor with the frightened bird in my 
nand. Before I was yet fully conscious of what was happen- 
ing, the wooden latch of the door had been lifted, and a man 
had stepped across the threshold. In another moment he had 
closed the door behind him, and was speaking to me. 

“ You will never find heart to deny me shelter on such a 
night as this?” he said. 

I answered him nothing. Surely with my mind I did not 
hear him, but only with mine ears. 1 was like the one who is 
awakened suddenly out of a long dream, and can scarce be 
sure which is the dream and which the reality, what is behind 
and what is before. 

The man stumbled a step forward, and said, speaking falter- 
ingly, “ I am faint from a blow.” 

He staggered another pace forward, and would have fallen, 
but I, recovering in some measure my self-command, caught 
him in my arms, and put him to sit on the settle before the 
hearth. 

Scarce had he gained this rest when his eyelids trembled and 
closed, and he became insensible. He was a large, swart, and 
bony man, bearing in his face the marks of life's hard storms. 
His dress was plainly the dress of a priest, but of an order of 
priesthood quite unknown to me. A proud poverty sat upon 
the man, and before I yet knew wherefore my heart went out 
to him in a strange, uncertain reverence. 

Loosening the hard collar that bound his neck, I made bare 
his throat, and then moistened his lips with water. Some 
other offices I did for him, such as with difficulty removing 
his great boots, which were full of water, and stretching his 
feet toward the fire. I stirred the peats, too, and the glow 
was full and grateful. Then I looked for the mark of the 
blow he spoke of, and found it where most it was to be feared* 


THE DEEMSTER. 


30 ? 


on the hinder part of the head. Though there was no blood 
flowing, yet was the skull driven in upon the brain, leaving a 
hollow spot over a space that might have been covered by a 
copper token. 

He did not soon return to consciousness, but toiled hard at 
intervals to regain it, and then lapsed back to a breathless 
quiet. And 1, not knowing what else to do, took a basin of 
water lukewarm and bathed the wound with it, damping the 
forehead with water that was cold. All this time the sea-mew, 
which I had cast from my hand when the priest stumbled, lay 
in one corner panting, its head down, its tail up, and its 
powerless wings stretched useless on either side. 

Then the man, taking a long breath, opened his eyes, and 
seeing me he made some tender of gratitude. He told me 
that in being put ashore out of the brig “ Bridget,” from 
Cork, in Ireland, he had been struck on the head by the boom 
as it shifted with the wind, hut that heeding not his injury, 
and thinking he could make Port-le-Mary to lie there that 
night, he had set out over the moor, while his late comrades 
of the brig put off from our perilous coast for England, 
whither they were bound. 

So much had he said, speaking painfully, when again he fell 
to unconsciousness, and this time a strong delirium took hold 
of him. I tried not to hear what then he said, for it seemed 
to me an awful thing that in such an hour of reason's van- 
quishment the eye of man might look into the heart which 
only God's eye should see. But hear him 1 must, or leave 
him alone in his present need. And he talked loudly of some 
great outrage^ wherein helpless women were thrown on the 
roads without shelter, and even the dead in their graves were 
desecrated. When he came to himself again he knew that his 
mind had wandered, and he told me that four years before he 
had been confessor at the convent of Port Iioyal in France. 
He said that in that place they had been men and women of 
the Order of Jansenists, teaching simple goodness and piety. 
But their convent had been suppressed by commission of the 
Jesuits, and being banished from France, he had fled to his 
native country of Ireland, where now he held the place of 
parish priest. More in this manner he said, but my mind was 
sorely perplexed, and I can not recall his words faithfully, or 
rightly tell of the commerce of conversation between us, save 
that he put to me some broken questions in his moments of 
ease from pain, and muttered many times to himself after 1 
had answered him briefly, or when I had answered him not 
at all. 


308 


THE DEEMSTER. 


For the sense that I was a man awakening out of a dream, 
a long dream of seven lonesome years, grew stronger as lie 
told of what traffic the world had lately seen, and he himself 
been witness to. And my old creeping terror of the judgment . 
upon me that forbade that any man should speak with me, or 
that I should speak with any man, struggled hard with the 
necessity now before me to make a swift choice whether I 
should turn away and leave this man, who had sought the 
shelter of my house, or break through the curse that bound 
me. 

Choice of any kind I did not make with a conscious mind, 
but before 1 was yet aware 1 was talking with the priest, and 
he with me. 

The Priest: He said, I am the Catholic priest that your 
good bishop sent for out of Ireland, as you have heard I doubt 
not? 

Myself: 1 answered No, that I had not heard. 

The Priest : He asked me, did I live alone in this house, and 
how long I had been here? 

Myself: I said. Yes, and that I had been seven years in this 
place come Christmas. 

The Priest: He asked. What, and do you never go up to the 
towns? 

Myself: 1 answered. No. 

The Priest: Then, said the priest, thinking long before he 
spoke, you have not heard of the great sickness that has 
broken out among your people. 

Myself: I told him 1 had heard nothing. 

The Priest: He said it was the sweating sickness, and that 
vast numbers had fallen to it and many had died. I think he 
said — I can not be sure — that after fruitless efforts of his own 
to combat the disease, the bishop of the island had sent to 
Ireland a message for him, having heard that the Almighty 
had blessed his efforts in a like terrible scourge that broke out 
two years before over the bogs of western Ireland. 

I listened with fear, and began to comprehend much that 
had of late been a puzzle to me. But before the priest had 
gone far his sickness overcame him afresh, and he fell to an- 
other long unconsciousness. While he lay thus, very silent or 
rambling afresh through the ways of the past, I know not 
what feelings possessed me, for my heart was in a great tur- 
moil. But when he opened his eyes again, very peaceful in 
their quiet light, but with less than before of the power of life 
in them, he said he perceived that his errand had been fruit- 
less, and that he had but come to my house to die. At that 


THE DEEMSTER. 


m 


word I started to my feet with a cry, but he— thinking that 
my thoughts were of our poor people, who would lose a de- 
liverer by his death — told me to have patience, for that God 
who had smitten him down would surely raise up in his stead 
a far mightier savior of my afflicted countrymen. 

Then in the lapses of his pain he talked of the sickness that 
had befallen his own people: how r it was due to long rains that 
soaked the soil, and was followed by the hot sun that drew out 
of the earth its foul sweat; how the sickness fell chiefly on 
such as had their houses on bogs and low-lying ground; and 
how the cure for it was to keep the body of the sick person 
closely wrapped in blankets, and to dry the air about him with 
many fires. He told me, too, that all medicines he had yet 
seen given for this disease were useless, and being oftenest of 
a cooling nature were sometimes deadly. He said that those 
of his own people who had lived on the mountains had escaped 
the malady. Much he also said of how men had fled from 
their wives and women from their children in terror of the 
infection, but that, save only in the worst cases, contagion 
from the sweating sickness there could be none. More of this 
sort he said than 1 can well set down in this writing. Often 
he spoke with sore labor, as though a strong impulse prompted 
him. And I who listened eagerly heard what he said with a 
mighty fear, for well I knew that if death came to him as he 
foretold, 1 had now that knowledge which it must be sin to 
hide. 

After he had said this the lapses into unconsciousness were 
more frequent than before, and the intervals of cool reason 
and sweet respite from pain were briefer. But a short while 
after midnight he came to himself with a smile on his meager 
face and peace in his eyes. He asked me would I promise to 
do one thing for him, for that he was a dying man; and I told 
him yes before 1 had heard what it was that he wished of me. 
Then he asked did I know where the bishop lived, and at first 
1 made no answer. 

Bishop’s Court they call his house, be said, and it lies to 
the north-west of this island by the land they have named the 
curraghs. Do you know it? 

I bent my head by way of assent. 

The Priest: I would have you go to him, he said, and say — 
The Catholic priest you sent for out of Ireland, Father Dalby, 
fulfilled his pledge to you and came to your island, but died 
by the visitation of God on the night of his landing on your 
shores. Will you deliver me this message? 

I did not make him an answer, and he put the question 


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again. Still my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and 1 
could not speak. 

The Priest: You need not fear, he said, to go to the bishop, 
for he is a holy man, as I have heard, without pride of worldly 
place, and the poor and outcast are his constant guests. 

Eves yet I answered nothing, but only held down my head 
while my heart surged within me. 

The Priest: The fame of him as a righteous servant of God 
had gone far into other lands, and therefore it was I, who love 
Protestantism not at all, and hold no dalliance with it, came 
to your island at his call. 

He took my hand in his hands and asked me again if I 
would go to the bishop to say the words which he had given 
me, and I, with swimming eyes that saw nothing of the dying 
face before me, bowed my head, and answered, I will go. 

Near three hours longer he lived, and much of that time he 
passed in a feeble delirium. But just before the end came he 
awoke, and motioned to a small bag that hung about his 
waist. I guessed his meaning, and drawing out a crucifix I 
placed it in his hands. 

Then he passed silently away, and Death, the black camel 
that had knelt at the gate of my lone house these seven years 
of death-in-life, had entered it at last to take another man 
than me. 


CHAPTER XL11I. 

OF HIS GREAT RESOLYE. 

Wheh he had ceased to breathe, the air of my house became 
suddenly void and empty. With a great awe upon me I rose 
and stretched him out on the settle, and covered his white face 
with a cloth. Then in the silence I sat and tried to think of 
the strange accident that had that night befallen. One thing 
1 saw with a fearful certainty, that a great burden of respon- 
sibility had fallen upon me. I thought of the people of this 
island perishing in their sickness, and I remembered that I 
alone of all men here knew how to succor and save them. 1 
alone, and who was 1? The one man accursed among men; 
the one man cut off forever from the company of the living; 
the man without family or kin or name among the people; 
whose flesh no man might touch with his flesh; whose eye no 
other eye might look upon. 

And thus with the burden of responsibility came a yet more 
terrible burden of doubt. Was it for me to break through the 
dread judgment pronounced upon me, and go down among 


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311 


the people to heal them? And if I went would the people re- 
ceive me, even in this their last extreme? Before the face o! 
death would all other fears sink out of their sight? Or, fear- 
ing death itself less than the curse, would they rise up and 
drive me from them? 

Long I sat in the anguish of black misgivings, and then 
rose and ranged my room from side to side, if perchance 1 
might find some light in my darkness. And oft did the 
strangeness of that night's accidents so far bewilder me that 
for an instant it would seem that 1 must be in a dream. Once 
I lifted the face-cloth from the face on the settle that I might 
be sure that I was awake. 

At length it fixed itself on my mind that whatsoever the 
judgment upon me, and whatsoever the people's terror of it, 
1 had no choice but to bear the burden that was now mine 
own. Go down among my sick countrymen I should and 
must, let the end be what it would! Accursed man though I 
was, yet to fulfill the dead priest's mission was a mission where- 
with God Himself seemed to charge me! 

And now I scarce can say how it escaped me that my first 
duty was to take the body of the priest who had died in my 
house to one of the church-yards for Christian burial. There 
must have been some end of Providence in my strange forget- 
fulness, for if this thing had but come into my wild thoughts, 
and 1 had indeed done what it was fitting that I should do, 
then must certain wonderful consequences have fallen short of 
the blessing with which God has blessed them. 

What I did, thinking no evil, was to pick up my spade and 
go out on the moor and delve for the dead man a shallow 
grave. As 1 turned to the door I stumbled over something 
that lay on the floor. Stooping to look at it, I found it to be 
the poor sea-mew. It was dead and stiff, and had still its 
wings outstretched as if in the act of flight. 

I had not noted until now, when with a fearful glance 
backward 1 stepped out into the night, that the storm had 
gone. A thick dew-cloud lay deep over the land, and the 
round moon was shining through it. I chose a spot a little to 
the south of the stone circle on the Black Head, and there by 
the moon's light I howket a barrow of earth. The better part 
of an hour 1 wrought, and when my work was done I went 
back to my house, and then the dead man was cold. I took a 
piece of old canvas, and put it about the body, from head to 
feet, wrapping it over the clothes, and covering the face. 
This done, I lifted the dead in my arms and carried it out. 

Very hollow and heavy was the thud of my feet on the turf 


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in that uncertain light. As 1 toiled along I recalled the 
promise that I had given to the priest to see my father and 
speak with him. This memory brought me the sore pain of a 
wounded tenderness, but it strengthened my resolve. When 
I had reached the grave which I had made the night was near 
to morning, the dew-cloud had lifted away, and out of the un- 
seen, murmuring sea that lay far and wide in front of me a 
gray streak, like an arrow’s barb, was shooting up into the 
darkness of the sky. 

One glance more I took at the dead man’s face in that vague 
fore-dawn, and its swart meagerness seemed to have passed off 
under death’s composing hand. 

I covered the body with the earth, and then I said my 
prayer, for it was nigh to my accustomed hour. Also I sung 
my psalm, kneeling with my face toward the sea. And while 
I sung in that dank air the sky lightened and the sun rose out 
of the deep. 

I know not what touched me then, if it was not the finger 
of God Himself; but suddenly a great burden seemed to fall 
from me, and my heart grew full of a blessed joy. And, oh 
Father, I cried, I am delivered from the body of the death I 
lived in! I have lived, I have died, and I live again! 

I saw apparently that the night of my long imprisonment 
was past, that the doors of my dungeon were broken open, 
and that its air was to be the breath of my nostrils no more. 

Then the tears gushed from mine eyes and rained down my 
bony cheeks, for well I knew that God had seen that I, even 
I, had suffered enough. 

And when I rose to my feet from beside the dead man’s 
grave I felt of a certainty that the curse had fallen away. 

* * * * * * * 

His Last Words. 

Three days have gone since last I put my hand to this 
writing, and now I know that though the curse has fallen 
from me, yet must its earthly penalties be mine to the end. 
Sorely weary, and more sorely ashamed, I have, within these 
three hours past, escaped from the tumult of the people. 
How their wild huzzas ring in my ears! “ God bless the 
priest!” “ Heaven save the priest!” Their loud cries of a 
blind gratitude, how they follow me! Oh, that 1 could fly 
from the memory of them, and wipe them out of my mind! 
There were those that appeared to know me among the many 
that knew me not. The tear-stained faces, the faces hard and 
stony, the faces abashed and confused — how they live before 


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313 


my eyes! And at the Tynwald, how the children were thrust 
under my hand for my blessing! My blessing-mine! and at 
the Tynwald! Thank God, it is all over! I am away from it 
forever. Home I am at last, and for the last time. 

Better than three weeks have passed since the priest died in 
my house, and I buried him on the moor. What strange 
events have since befallen, and in what a strange new world! 
The Deemster’s terrible end, and my own going with the 
priest’s message to the bishop, my father. But I shall not 
live to set it down. Nor is it needful so to do, for she whom 
I write for knows all that should be written henceforward. 
Everything she knows save one thing only, and if this writing 
should yet come to her hand that also she will then learn. 

God’s holy grace be with her! 1 have not seen her. The 
Deemster I have seen, the bishop I have spoken with, and a 
living vision of our Ewan, his sweet child-daughter, I have 
held to my knee. But not once these many days has she who 
is dearest of all to me passed before my eyes. It is better so. 
I shunned her. Where she was there 1 would not go. Yet, 
through all these heavy years I have borne her upon my heart. 
Day and night she has been with me. Oh, Mona, Mona, my 
Mona, apart forever are our paths in this dim world, and my 
tarnished name is your reproach. My love, my lost love, as a 
man I yearned for you to hold you to my breast. But I was 
dead to you, and I would not break in with an earthly love 
that must be brief and might not be blessed, on a memory 
that death had purified of its stains. Adieu, adieu, my love, 
my own Mona; though we are never to clasp hands again, 
yet do I know that you will be with me as an unseen presence 
when the hour comes — ah! how soon — of death’s asundering. 

For the power of life is low in me. I have taken the sick- 
ness. It is from the Deemster that I have taken it. No 
longer do I fear death. Yet 1 hesitate to do with myself what 
I have long thought that I would do when the end should 
come. “ To-morrow,” and “ to-morrow,” and “ to-morrow,” 
1 say in my heart, and still I am here. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE SWEATING SICKNESS. 

I. 

When the sweating sickness first appeared in the island it 
carried off the lone body known as Auntie Nan, who had lived 
on the curragh. “ Death never came without an excuse— the 


314 


THE DEEMSTER. 


woman was old,” the people said, and went their way. But 
presently a bright young girl, who had taken herbs and broths 
and odd comforts to Auntie Nan while she lay helpless, was 
stricken down. Then the people began to hold their heads 
together. Four days after the girl was laid to rest her mother 
died suddenly, and two or three days after the mother’s death 
the father was smitten. Then three other children died in 
quick succession, and in less than three weeks not a soul of 
that household was left alive. This was on the south-west of 
the curragh, and on the north of it, near to the church at 
Andreas, a similar outbreak occurred about the same time. 
Two old people named Creer were the first to be taken; and a 
child at Cregan’s farm and a servant at the rectory of the 
archdeacon followed quickly. 

The truth had now dawned upon the people, and they went 
about with white faces. It was the time of the hay harvest, 
and during the two hours’ rest for the midday meal the hay- 
makers gathered together in the fields for prayer. At night, 
when work was done, they met again in the streets of the 
villages to call on God to avert His threatened judgment. On 
Sundays they thronged the churches at morning and afternoon 
services, and in the evening they congregated on the shore to 
hear the Quaker preachers, who went about, under the shadow 
of the terror, without hinderance or prosecution. One such 
preacher, a town-watch at Castletown, kno?/n as Billy-by- 
Nite, threw up his calling, and traveled the country in the cart 
of a carrier, prophesying a visitation of God’s wrath, wherein 
the houses should be laid waste and the land be left utterly 
desolate. 

The sickness spread rapidly, and passed from the curraghs 
to the country south and east of them. Not by ones but tens 
were the dead now counted day after day, and the terror 
spread yet faster than the malady. The herring season had 
run a month only, and it was brought to a swift close. Men 
who came in from the boats after no more than a night’s ab- 
sence were afraid to go up to their homes lest the sickness had 
gone up before them. Then they went out to sea jio longer, 
but rambled for herbs in the rank places where herbs grew, 
and finding them, good and bad, fit and unfit, they boiled and 
eat them. 

Still the sickness spread, and the dead were now counted in 
hundreds. Of doctors there were but two in the island, and 
these two were closely engaged sitting by the bedsides of the 
richer folk, feeling the pulse with one hand and holding the 


THE DEEMSTER* 315 

watch with the other. Better service they did not do, for rich 
and poor alike fell before the sickness. 

The people turned to the clergy, and got “ beautiful texes,” 
but no cure. They went to the old bishop, and prayed for 
the same help that he had given them in the old days of their 
great need. He tried to save them and failed. A preparation 
of laudanum, which had served him in good stead for the flux, 
produced no effect on the sweating sickness. With other and 
other medicines he tried and tried again. His old head was 
held very low. “ My poor people,” he said, with a look of 
shame, “ I fear that by reason of the sins of me and mine the 
Spirit of the Lord is gone from me.” 

Then the people sent up a cry as bitter as that which was 
wrung from them long before when they were in the grip of 
their hunger. “ The Sweat is on us,” they groaned; and the 
old bishop, that he might not hear their voice of reproach, 
shut himself up from them like a servant whom the Lord had 
forsaken. 

Then terror spread like a fire^ but terror in some minds 
begets a kind of courage, and soon there were those who would 
no longer join the prayer- meetings in the hay fields or listen 
to the preaching on the shore. One of those was a woman of 
middle life, an idle slattern, who had for six or seven years 
lived a wandering life. While others prayed she laughed 
mockingly and protested that for the sweat, as well as for 
every other scare of life, there was no better preventive than 
to think nothing about it. She carried out her precept by 
spending her days in the inns and her nights on the roads, 
being supported in her dissolute existence by secret means, 
whereof gossip spoke frequently. The terrified world about 
her, busy with its loud prayers, took small heed of her blas- 
phemies until the numbers of the slain had risen from hun- 
dreds to thousands. Then in their frenzy the people were 
carried away by superstition, and heard in the woman’s 
laughter the ring of the devil’s own ridicule. Somebody 
chanced to see her early one morning drawing water to bathe 
her hot forehead, and before night of that day the evil word 
had passed from mouth to mouth that it was she who had 
brought the sweating sickness by poisoning the wells. 

Thereupon half a hundred lusty fellows, with fear in their 
wild eyes, gathered in the street, and set out to search for the 
woman. In her accustomed haunt, the Three Legs of 
Man, they found her, and she was heavy with drink. They 
hounded her out of the inn into the road, and there, amid 
oaths and curses, they tossed her from hand to hand until her 


316 


THE DEEMSTER. 


dress was in rags, her face and arms were bleeding, and she 
was screaming in the great fright that had sobered her. 

It was Tuesday night, and the Deemster, who had been 
holding court at Peeltown late that day, was riding home in 
the darkness when he heard this tumult in the road in front 
of him. Putting spurs to his horse, he came upon the scene 
of it. Before he had gathered the meaning of what was pro- 
ceeding in the dark road, the woman had broken from her 
tormentors and thrown herself before him, crawling on the 
ground and gripping his foot in the stirrup. 

“ Deemster, save me! save me, Deemster!” she cried in her 
frantic terror. 

The men gathered round and told their story. The woman 
had poisoned the wells, and the bad water had brought the 
Sweat. She was a charmer by common report, and should be 
driven out of the island. 

“ What peddler’s French is this?” said the Deemster, turn- 
ing hotly on the crowd about him. “ Men, men, what for- 
gotten age have you stepped out of that you come to me with 
such driveling, doddering, blank idiocy?” 

But the woman, carried away by her terror, and not 
grasping the Deemster’s meaning, cried that if he would but 
save her she would confess. Yes, she had poisoned the wells. 
It was true she was a charmer. She acknowledged to the evil 
eye. But save her, save her, save her, and she would tell all. 

The Deemster listened with a feverish impatience. “ The 
woman lies,” he said under his breath, and then lifting his 
voice he asked if any one had a torch. “ Who is the woman?” 
he asked; “ 1 seem to know her voice.” 

“ D — n her, she’s a witch,” said one of the men, thrust- 
ing his hot face forward in the darkness over the woman’s 
cowering body. “Ay, and so was her mother before her,” 
he said again. 

“ Tell me, woman, what’s your name?” said the Deemster, 
stoutly; but his question seemed to break down as he asked it. 

There was a moment’s pause. 

“ Mally Kerruish,” the woman answered him, slobbering at 
his stirrup in the dark road before him. 

“ Let her go,” said the Deemster, in a thick underbreath. 
In another moment he had disengaged his foot from the 
woman’s grasp and was riding away. 

That night Mally Kerruish died miserably of her fright in 
the little tool-shed of a cottage by the Cross Vein, where six 
years before her mother had dropped to a lingering death 
alone. 


THE DEEMSTER. 


317 


News of her end was taken straightway to Ballamona by 
one of the many tongues of evil rumor. With Jarvis Ker- 
ruish, who was in a lace collar and sliver-buckled shoes, tho 
Deemster had sat down to supper. He rose, left his meat un- 
touched, and Jarvis supped alone. Late that night he said 
uneasily: 

“ I intend to send in my resignation to Castletown — the 
burden of my office as Deemster is too much for my strength.” 

“ Good,” said Jarvis; 44 and if, sir, you should ever think 
of resigning the management of your estate also, you know 
with how much willingness I would undertake it, solely in 
order that you might spend your days in rest and comfort.” 

“ I have often thought of it latterly,” said the Deemster. 
Half an hour thereafter he spent in an uneasy perambulation 
of the dining-room, while Jarvis picked his teeth and cleaned 
his nails. 

44 1 think I must surely be growing old,” he said then, and, 
drawing a long breath, he took up his bedroom candle. 


II. 

The sickness increased, the deaths were many in the houses 
about Ballamona, and in less than a week after the night of 
Mally Kerruish's death, Thorkell Mylrea, a Deemster no 
longer, had made over to Jarvis Kerruish all absolute interest 
in his estates. 44 1 shall spend my last days in the cause of 
religion,” he said. He had paid up his tithe in pound notes — 
five years* tithe in arrears, with interest added at the rate of 
six per cent. Blankets he had ordered for the poor of his own 
parish, a double blanket for each family, with cloaks for some 
of the old women. 

This done, he relinquished his worldly possessions, and shut 
himself from the sickness in a back room of Ballamona, ad- 
mitting none, and never stirring abroad except to go to church. 

The bishop had newly opened the chapel at Bishop's Court 
for daily prayers, and of all constant worshipers there Thor- 
kell was now the most constant. Every morning his little 
shriveled figure knelt at the form before the Communion, 
and from his blanched lips the prayers were mumbled audibly. 
Much he sought the bishop's society, and in every foolish trifle 
he tried to imitate his brother. A new' canon of the Church 
had lately ordered that every bishop should wear an episcopal 
wig, and over his flowing white hair the Bishop of Man had 
perforce to put the grotesque head-covering. Seeing this. 


318 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Thorkell sent to England for a periwig, and perched the 
powdered curls on his own bald crown. 

The sickness was afc its worst, the terror was at its height, 
and men were flying from their sick families to caves in the 
mountains, when one day the bishop announced in church that 
across in Ireland, as he had heard, there was a good man who 
had been blessed under God with miraculous powers of curing 
this awful malady. 

“ Send for him! send for him!” the people shouted with 
one voice, little heeding the place they sat in. 

“But,” said the bishop, with a failing voice, “the good 
man is a Roman Catholic — indeed, a Romish priest.” 

At that word a groan came from the people for they were 
Protestants of Protestants. 

“ Let us not think that no good can come out of Nazareth,” 
the bishop continued. “ And who shall say, though we love 
the Papacy not at all, but that holy men adhere to it?” 

There was a murmur of disapproval. 

“ My good people,” the bishop went on, falteringly, “ we 
are in God's hands, and His anger burns among us.” 

The people broke up abruptly, and talking of what the 
bishop had said, they shook their heads. But their terror 
continued, and before its awful power their qualms of faith 
went down as before a flood. Then they cried, “ Send for the 
priest!” and the bishop sent for him. 

Seven weary days passed, and at length with a brightening 
countenance the bishop announced that the priest had an- 
swered that he would come. Other three days went by, and 
the news passed from north to south that in the brig “ Bridg- 
et ” of Cork, bound for Whitehaven, with liberty to call at 
Peel town, the Romish priest. Father Dalby, had sailed for the 
Isle of Man. 

Then day after day the men went up to the hill-tops to catch 
sight of the sail of an Irish brig. At last they sighted one 
from the Mull Hills, and she was five leagues south of the 
Calf. But the wind was high, and the brig labored hard in a 
heavy sea. Four hours the people watched her, and saw her 
bearing down into the most dangerous currents about their 
coast. Night closed in, and the wind rose to the strength of 
a gale. Next morning at early dawn the people climbed the 
headlands again, but no brig could they now see, and none 
had yet made their ports. 

“ She must be gone down,” they told themselves, and so 
saying they went home with heavy hearts. 

But two days afterward there went through the island a 


THE DEEMSTER. 


319 


thrilling cry, “ He is here! — he has come! — the priest!” And 
at that word a wave of rosy health swept over a thousand hag- 
gard faces. 


III. 

In the dark sleeping-room of a little ivy-covered cottage that 
stood end-on to the high-road through Michael a blind woman 
lay dying of the sickness. It was old Kerry; and on a three- 
legged stool before her bed her husband Hommy sat. Pitiful 
enough was Hommy’s poor ugly face. His thick lubber lips 
were drawn heavily downward, and under his besom brows 
his little eyes were red and his eyelids swollen. In his hands 
he held a shovel, and he was using it as a fan to puff air into 
Kerry’s face. 

“ It’s all as one, man,” the sick woman moaned. “ Ye're 
only keeping the breath in me. I'm bound to lave ye.” 

And thereupon Hommy groaned lustily and redoubled his 
efforts with the shovel. There was a knock at the door, and a 
lady entered. It was Mona, pale of face, but very beautiful 
in her pallor, and with an air of restful sadness. 

“And how are you now, dear Kerry?” she asked, leaning 
over the bed. 

“ Middling badly, mam,” Kerry answered feebly. “ I'll 
be took, sarten sure, as the saying is. ” 

“ Don’t lose heart, Kerry. Have you not heard that the 
priest is coming?” 

“ Chut, mam! I’ll be gone, plaze God, where none of the 
like will follow me.” 

“Hush, Kerry! He was in Patrick yesterday; he will be 
in German to-morrow, and the next day he will be here in 
Michael. He is a good man, and is doing wonders with the 
sick.” 

Kerry turned face to the wall, and Hommy talked with 
Mona. What was to become of him when Kerry was gone? 
Who would be left to give him a bit of a tidy funeral? The 
Dempster? Bad sess to the like of him. What could be ex- 
pected from a master who had turned his own daughter out-of- 
doors? 

“Iam better where I am,” Mona whispered, and that was 
her sole answer to the deaf man’s too audible questions. And 
Hommy, after a pause, assented to the statement with his 
familiar comment, “ The bishop’s a rael ould archangel, so 
he is, ” 


320 


THE DEEMSTER. 


Thereupon Kerry turned her gaze from the wall and said, 
“ Didn’t I tell ye, mam, that he wasn’t dead?” 

“ Who?” 

“ Why — him — him that we mayn’t name — him. 3 

“ Hush, dear Kerry, he died long ago.” 

“ I tell ye, mam, he’s a living man, and coming back — I 
know it — he’s coming back immadient — I saw him.” 

“ Drop it, woman, it’s drames,” said Hommy. 

“ I saw him last night as plain as plain— wearing a long 
gray sack and curranes on his feet, and a queer sort of hat. ” 

“ It must have been the priest that you saw in your dream, 
dear Kerry.” 

The sick woman raised herself on one elbow, and answered 
eagerly, “ 1 tell you no, mam, but him — Mm 

“ Lie still, Kerry; you will be worse if you uncover yourself 
to the cool air.” 

There was a moment’s quiet, and then the blind woman said 
finally, “ I’m gomg where I’ll have my eyes same as another 
body.” 

At that Hommy’s rugged face broadened to a look of grew- 
6ome sorrow, and he renewed his exertions with the shovel. 


IY. 

At seven o’clock that day the darkness had closed in. A 
bright turf fire burned in a room in Bishop’s Court, and the 
bistiop sat before it with his slippered feet on a sheepskin rug. 
His face was mellower than of old, and showed less of strength 
and more of sadness. Mona stood at a tea-table by his side, 
cutting slices of bread and butter. 

A white face, with eyes of fear, looked in at the dark win- 
dow. It was Davy Fayle. He was but little older to look 
upon for the seven years that had gone heavily over his 
troubled head. His simple look was as vacant and his lag- 
ging lip hung as low; but his sluggish intellect had that night 
become suddenly charged with a ready man’s swiftness. 

Mona went to the door. “ Come in,” she said; but Davy 
would not come. He must speak with her outside, and she 
went out to him. 

He was trembling visibly. 

“ What is it?” she said. 

“ Mistress Mona,” said Davy, in a voice of great emotion, 
“ it’s as true as the living God.” 

“ What?” she said. 


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321 


“ He’s alive— ould Kerry said true — he’s alive, and coming 
back. ” 

Mona glanced into his face by the dull light that came 
through the window. His eyes, usually dull and vacant, were 
aflame with a strange fire. She laid one hand on the door- 
jamb, and said, catching her breath, “ Davy, remember what 
the men said long ago — that they saw him lying in the snow.” 

“ He’s alive, I’m telling you — I’ve seen him with my own 
eyes.” 

“ Where?” 

“I went down to Patrick this morning to meet the priest 
coming up — but it’s no priest at all — it’s — it’s — it’s Mm.” 

Again Mona drew her breath audibly. 

“ Think what you are saying, Davy. If it should not be 
true! Oh, if you should be mistaken!” 

“ It’s Bible truth. Mistress Mona — I’ll go bail on it afore 
God A’mighty.” 

“ The priest, you say?” 

“ Aw, lave it to me to know Mastha — I mean — Mm.’ 

“ I must go in, Davy. Good-night to you, and thank you — 
Good-night, and — ” the plaintive tenderness of her voice broke 
down to a sob. “ Oh, what can it all mean?” she exclaimed 
more vehemently. 

Davy turned away. The low moan of the sea came up 
through the dark night. 


Y. 


It happened that after service the next morning the bishop 
and Thorkell walked out of the chapel side by side. 

“We are old men now, Gilcrist,” said Thorkell, “ and 
should be good friends together.” 

“ That is so,” the bishop answered. 

“ We’ve both lost a son, and can feel for each other.” 

The bishop made no reply. 

“ We’re childless men, in fact.” 

“There’s Mona, God bless her!” the bishop said, very 


softly. 

“True, true,” said Thorkell, and there was silence for a 
moment. 

“It was partly her fault when she left me — partly, I say — 
don’t you think so, Gilcrist?” said Thorkell, nervously. 

“ She’s a dear sweet soul,” the bishop said. 

“ It’s true.” 

They stepped on a few paces, and passed by the spot where- 


323 


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on the two fishermen laid down their dread burden from the 
Mooragh seven years before. Then Thorkell spoke again and 
in a feverish voice. 

4 4 D'ye know, Gilcrist, I sometimes awake in the night cry- 
ing ‘ Ewan! Ewan!' " 

The bishop did not answer, and Thorkell, in another tone, 
asked when the Irish priest was to reach Michael. 

“ He may be here to-morrow," the bishop said. 

Thorkell shuddered. 

44 It must be that God is revenging Himself upon us with 
this fearful scourge." 

44 It dishonors God to say so," the bishop replied. 44 He is 
calling upon us to repent." 

There was another pause, and then Thorkell asked what a 
man should do to set things right in this world if perchance he 
had taken a little more in usury than was fair and honest. 

“ Give back whatever was more than justice," said the 
bishop, promptly. 

“ But that is often impossible, Gilcrist." 

“If he has robbed the widow, and she is dead, let him 
repay the fatherless." 

“It is impossible— I tell you, Gilcrist, it is impossible — 
impossible." 

As they were entering the house, Thorkell asked if there 
was truth in the rumor that the wells had been charmed. 

“ To believe such stories is to be drawn off from a trust in 
God and a dependence on His good providence," said the 
bishop. 

“ But I must say, brother, that strange things are known to 
happen. How I myself have witnessed extraordinary fulfill- 
ments. " 

“ Superstition is a forsaking of God, whom we have most 
need to fly to in trouble and distress," the bishop answered. 

“ True — very true — I loathe it; but still it's a sort of relig- 
ion, isn't it, Gilcrist?" 

44 So the wise man says — as the ape is a sort of a man." 


VI. 

Three days later the word went round that he who had been 
looked for was to come to Michael, and many went out to 
meet him. He was a stalwart man, straight and tall, bony 
and muscular. His dress was poverty's own livery: a gray 
shapeless sack-coat, reaching below his knees, curranes on his 
feet of untanned skin with open clocks, and a cap of cloth. 


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323 


half helmet and half hood, drawn closely down over his head. 
His cheeks were shaven and deeply bronzed. The expression 
of his face was of a strange commingling of strength and 
tenderness. His gestures were few, slow, and gentle. His 
measured step was a rhythmic stride — the stride of a man who 
has learned in the long endurance of solitude to walk alone in 
the ways of the world. He spoke little, and scarcely answered 
the questions which were put to him. “ Aw, but I seem to 
have seen the good man in my drames,” said one; and some 
said “ Ay ” to that, and some laughed at it. 

Within six hours of his coming he had set the whole parish 
to work. Half of the men he sent up into the mountains to 
cut gorse and drag it down to the curraghs in piles of ten feet 
high, tied about with long sheep lankets of twisted straw. 
The other half he set to dig trenches in the marshy places. 
He made the women to kindle a turf fire in every room with a 
chimney-flue, and when night came he had great fires of gorse, 
peat, withered vegetation, and dried sea-wrack built on the 
open spaces about the houses in which the sickness had broken 
out. He seemed neither to rest nor eat. From sick-house to 
sick-house, from trench to trench, and fire to fire, he moved 
on with his strong step. And behind him at all times, having 
never a word from him and never a look, but trudging along 
at his heels, like a dog, was the man-lad, Davy Fayle. 

Many of the affrighted people who had taken refuge in the 
mountains returned to their homes at his coming, but others, 
husbands and fathers chiefly, remained on the hills, leaving 
their wives and families to fend for themselves. Seeing this, 
he went up and found some of them in their hiding-places, 
and, shaming them out of their cowardice, brought them back 
behind him, more docile than sheep behind a shepherd. 
When the ex-town-watch, Billy-by-Nite, next appeared on the 
curraghs in the round of his prophetic itineration, the strange 
man said not a word, but he cut short the vehement jeremiad 
by taking the Quaker prophet by legs and neck, and throwing 
him headlong into one of the drain-troughs newly dug in the 
dampest places. 

But the strength of this silent man was no more conspicuous 
than his tenderness. When in the frenzy of their fever the 
sufferers would cast off their clothes, and try to rise from their 
beds and rush into the cooler air from the heat by which he 
had surrounded them, his big horny hands would restrain 
them with a great gentleness. 

Before he had been five days in Michael and on the curraghs 
the sickness began to abate. The deaths were fewer, and some 


324 


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of the sick rose from their beds. Then the people plied him 
with many questions, and would have overwhelmed him with 
their rude gratitude. To their questions he gave few answers, 
and when they thanked him he turned and left them. 

They said that their bishop, who was grown feeble, the good 
ould angel, thought it strange that he had not yet visited 
him. To this he answered briefly that before leaving the 
parish he would go to Bishop’s Court. 

They told him that Mistress Mona, daughter of the Demp- 
ster that was, bad sess to him, had been seeking him high and 
low. At this his lip trembled, and he bent his head. 

“ The good man’s face plagues me mortal,” said old Billy 
the Gawk. “ Whiles I know it, and otherwhiles 1 don’t.” 


VII. 

Only another day did the stranger remain in Michael, but 
the brief time was full of strange events. The night closed in 
before seven o’clock. It was then very dark across the mount- 
ains, and the sea lay black beyond the cliffs, but the curraghs 
were dotted over with the many fires which had been kindled 
about the infected houses. 

Within one of these houses, the home of Jabez Gawne, the 
stranger stood beside the bed of a sick woman, the tailor’s 
wife. Behind him there were anxious faces. Davy Fayle, 
always near him, leaned against the door-jamb by the porch. 

And while the stranger wrapped the sweltering sufferer in 
hot blankets, other sufferers sent to him to pray of him to 
come to them. First there came an old man to tell of his 
grandchild, who had been smitten down that day, and she was 
the last of his kin whom the Sweat had left alive. Then a 
woman, to say that her husband, who had started again with 
the boats but yesterday, had been brought home to her that 
night with the sickness. He listened to all who came, and 
answered quietly, “ I will go.” 

At length a young man ran in and said, “ The Dempster’s 
down. He’s shouting for you, sir. He sent me hot-foot to 
fetch you.” 

The stranger listened as before, and seemed to think rapidly 
for a moment, for his under lip trembled, and was drawn 
painfully inward. Then he answered as briefly as ever, and 
with as calm a voice, “ I will go.” 

The man ran back with his answer, but presently returned, 
saying, with panting breath, “ He’s rambling, sir; raving 


THE DEEMSTER. 325 

mad, sir; and shouting that he must be coming after you if 
you're not for coming to him. " 

“ We will go together," the stranger said, and they went 
out immediately. Davy Fayle followed them at a few paces. 


VIII. 

Through the darkness of that night a woman, young and 
beautiful, in cloak and hood like a nun's, walked from house 
to house of the curraghs, where the fires showed that the 
sickness was still raging. It was Mona. These three days 
past she had gone hither and thither, partly to tend the sick 
people, partly in hope of meeting the strange man who had 
come to cure them. Again and again she had missed him, 
being sometimes only a few minutes before or after him. 

Still she passed on from house to house, looking for him as 
she went in at every fresh door, yet half dreading the chance 
that might bring them face to face. 

She entered the house where he had received her father’s 
message almost on the instant when he left it. The three men 
had gone by her in the darkness. 

Jabez, the tailor, who sat whimpering in the ingle, told her 
that the priest had that moment gone off to Ballamona, where 
the Dempster that was — hadn't she heard the newses? — was 
new down with the Sweat. 

Her delicate face whitened at that, and after a pause she 
turned to follow. But going back to the hearth, she asked if 
the stranger had been told that the bishop wanted to see him. 
Jabez told her yes, and that he had said he would go up to 
Bishop's Court before leaving the parish. 

Then another question trembled on her tongue, but she 
could not utter it. At last she asked what manner of man 
the stranger was to look upon. 

“ Aw, big and sthraight and tall," said Jabez. 

And Billy the Gawk, who sat at the opposite side of the 
ingle, being kin to Jabez 's sick wife, said, “ Ay, and quiet 
like, and solemn extraordinary." 

“ A wonderful man, wonderful, wonderful," said Jabez, 
still whimpering. “ And wherever he comes the Sweat goes 
down before him with a flood. " 

“As I say," said Billy the Gawk, “the good man's face 
plagues me mortal. 1 can't bethink me where I've seen the 
like of it afore." 

Mona's lips quivered at that word, and she seemed to be 
about to speak; but she said nothing. 


326 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ And the strong he is!” said Jabez: “ I never knew 'nut 
one man in the island with half the strength of arm as him.” 

Mona's pale face twitched visibly, and she listened as with 
every faculty. 

“ Who d'ye mane?” asked Billy the Gawk. 

At that question there was a moment's silence between the 
men. Then each drew a long breath, dislodged a heavy 
burden from his throat, glanced significantly up at Mona, 
and looked into the other's face. 

“ Him ,” said Jabez, in a faint under- breath, speaking be- 
hind his hand. 

“Him?” 

Billy the Gawk straightened his crooked back, opened wide 
his rheumy eyes, pursed up his wizened cheeks, and emitted a 
low, long whistle. 

“ Lora A'mighty!” 

For an instant Jabez looked steadily into the old mendicant's 
face, and then drew himself up in his seat — 

“ Lord a-massy!” 

Mona’s heart leaped to her mouth. She was almost beside 
herself with suspense, and felt an impulse to scream. 


IX. 

Within a week after old Thorkell had conversed with the 
bishop about the rumor that the wells had been charmed, his 
terror of the sickness had grown nigh to madness. He went 
to church no longer, but shut himself up in his house. Night 
and day his restless footstep could be heard to pass from room 
to room and floor to floor. He eat little, and such was his 
dread of the water from his well that for three days together 
he drank nothing. At length, burning from thirst, he went 
up the Dhoon Glen and drank at a pool, going down on hands 
and kneess to lap the water like a dog. Always he seemed to 
be mumbling prayers, and when the bell of the church rang, 
no matter for what occasion, he dropped to his knees and prayed 
audibly. He forbade the servants of the house to bring him 
news of deaths, but waited and watched and listened at open 
doors for their conversation among themselves. At night he 
went to the front windows to look at the fires that were kindled 
about the infected houses on the curraghs. He never failed 
to turn from that sight with bitter words. Such work was 
but the devil's play: it was making a mock at God, who had 
sent the sickness to revenge Himself on the island's guilty 
people. Thorkell told Jarvis Kerruish as much time after 


THE DEEMSTER. 


327 


time. Jarvis answered contemptuously, and Thorkell retorted 
angrily. At length they got to high words, and Jarvis flung 
away. 

One morning Thorkell called for Hommy-beg. They told 
him that Hommy had been nursing his wife. The blind 
woman was now dead, and Hommy was burying her. At this 
Thorkell's terror was appalling to look upon. All night long 
he had been telling himself that he despised the belief in 
second sight, but that he would see if Kerry pretended to 
know whether he himself was to outlive the scourge. No 
matter, the woman was dead. So much the better! 

Later the same day, Thorkell remembered that somewhere 
on the mountains there lived an old farmer who was a seer 
and bard. He would go to see the old charlatan. Yes, he 
would amuse himself with the superstition that aped religion. 
Thorkell set out, and found the bard's lonely house far up 
above the Sherragh Vane. In a corner of the big fireplace the 
old man sat, with a black shawl bound about his head and tied 
under his chin. He was past eighty years of age, and his face 
was as old a face as Thorkell had ever looked upon. On his 
knee a young child was sitting, and two or three small boys 
were playing about his feet. A brisk middle-aged woman was 
stirring the peats and settling the kettle on the chimney-hook. 
She was the old man's wife, and the young brood were the old 
man's children. 

Thorkell began to talk of carvals, and said he had come to 
hear some of them. The old bard's eyes brightened. He had 
written a carol about the sickness. From the “lath" he 
took a parchment pan, full of papers that were worn, thumb- 
marked, and greasy. From one of these papers he began to 
read, and Thorkell tried to listen. The poem was an account 
of a dream. The dreamer had dreamed that he had gone into 
a church. There was a congregation gathered, and a preacher 
was in the pulpit. But when the preacher prayed the dreamer 
heard nothing of God. At length he discovered that it was a 
congregation of the dead in the region of the damned. They 
had all died of the Sweat. Every man of them had been 
warned by wise men and women in this world. The congre- 
gation sung a joyless psalm, and when their service was done 
they began to break up. Then the dreamer recognized some 
whom he had known in the flesh. Among them was one who 
had killed his own son, and he was afflicted with a burning 
thirst. To this unhappy man the dreamer offered a basin of 
milk-and-water, but the damned soul could not get the basin 


328 


THE DEEMSTER. 


to his parched lips, straggle as he might to lift it in his stiff 
arms. 

At first Thorkell listened with the restless mind of a man 
who had come on better business, and then with a feverish 
interest. The sky had darkened since he entered the house, 
and while the old bard chanted in his sing-song voice, and the 
children made their clatter around his feet, a storm of heavy 
rain pelted against the window-pane. 

The ballad ended in the grim doggerel of a harrowing ap- 
peal to the sinner to shun his evil courses: 

O sinner, see your dangerous state, 

And think of hell ere ’tis too late; 

When worldly cares would drown each thought, 

Pray call to mind that hell is hot. 

Still to increase your godly fears 
Let this be sounding in your ears, 

Still bear in mind that hell is hot, 

Remember, and forget it not.” 

Thus, with a swinging motion of the body, the old bard of 
the mountains chanted his rude song on the dangers of dam- 
nation. Thorkell leaped up from the settle and sputtered out 
an expression of contempt. What madness was this? If he 
had his way he would clap all superstitious people into the 
castle. 

The next morning, when sitting down to breakfast, Thor- 
kell told Jarvis Kerruish that he had three nights running 
dreamed the same dream, and it was a a terrible one. Jarvis 
laughed in his face, and said he was a foolish old man. . Thor- 
kell answered with heat, and they parted on the instant, 
neither touching food. Toward noon Thorkell imagined he 
felt feverish, and asked for Jarvis Kerruish; but Jarvis was at 
his toilet and would not be disturbed. At five o’clock the 
same day Thorkell was sweating from every pore, and crying 
lustily that he had taken the sickness. Toward seven he 
ordered the servant— a young man named Juan Caine, who 
had come to fill Hommy’s place — to go in search of the 
Romish priest. Father Dalby. 

When the stranger came, the young man opened the door 
to him, and whispered that the old master’s wits were gone. 
“ He’s not been wise these two hours,” the young man said, 
and then led the way to Thorkell ’s bedroom. He missed the 
corridor, and the stranger pointed to the proper door. 

Thorkell was sitting up in his bed. His clothes had not 
been taken off, but his coat — a blue coat, laced — and also his 
long yellow vest were unbuttoned. His wig was perched on 


THE DEEMSTER. 


329 


the top of a high-backed chair, and over his bald head hung 
a torn piece of red flannel. His long hairy hands, with the 
prominent blue veins, crawled over the counterpane. His 
eyes were open very wide. When he saw the stranger he was 
for getting out of bed. 

“I am not ill,” he said; “it's folly to think that I’ve 
taken the sickness. 1 sent for you to tell you something that 
you should know.” 

Then he called to the young man to bring him water. 
46 Juan, water!” he cried; “ Juan, I say, more water.” 

He turned to the stranger. “ It’s true I’m always athirst, 
but is that any proof that I have taken the sickness? Juan, 
be ’ck — water!” 



The young man brought a pewter pot of cold water, and 
Thorkell clutched at it, but as he was stretching his neck to 
drink, his hot lips working visibly, and his white tongue pro- 
truding, he drew suddenly back. “Is it from the well?” he 
asked. 

The stranger took the pewter out of his hands, unlocking 
his stiff fingers with his own great bony ones. “ Make the 
water hot,” he said to the servant. 

Thorkell fell back on his pillow, and the rag of red blanket 
dropped from his bald crown. Then he lifted himself on one 
elbow and began again to talk of the sickness. “ You have 
made a mistake,” he said. “It is not to be cured. It is 
God’s revenge on the people of this sinful island. Shall 1 tell 
you for what offense? For superstition. Superstition is the 
ape of religion. It is the reproach of God. Juan! Juan, I 
say, help me off with this coat. And these bed-clothes also. 
Why are there so many? It’s true, sir — father, is it? — it’s 
true, father, I’m hot, but what of that? Water! Juan, more 
water — Glen water, Juan!” 

The stranger pushed Thorkell gently back, and covered him 
closely from the air. 

“ As I say, it is superstition, sir,” said Thorkell, again. 
“ I would have it put down by law. It is the curse of this 
island. What are those twenty-four Keys doing that they 
don’t stamp it out? And the clergy — what are they wrang- 
ling about now, that they don’t see to it? I’ll tell you how it 
is, sir. It is this way. A man does something, and some old 
woman sneezes. Straighway he thinks himself accursed, and 
that what is predicted must certainly come about. And it 
does come about. Why? Because the man himself, with his 
blundering, doddering fears, brings it about. He brings it 


330 


THE DEEMSTER. 


about himself — that’s how it is! And then every old woman 
in the island sneezes again. * ’ 

Saying this, Thorkell began to laugh, loudly, frantically, 
atrociously. Jarvis Kerruish had entered while he was run- 
ning on with his tirade. The stranger did not lift his eyes to 
Jarvis, but Jarvis looked at him attentively. 

When Thorkell had finished his hideous laugh he turned to 
Jarvis and asked if superstition was not the plague of the 
island, and if it ought not to be put down by law. Jarvis 
1 1 1 ' * but this form of contempt was lost 



“ Have we not often agreed that it is so?” said Thorkell. 

“ And that you,” said Jarvis, speaking slowly and bitterly, 
“ are the most superstitious man alive.” 

“ What? what?” Thorkell cried. 

The stranger lifted his face, and looked steadily into Jarvis’s 
eyes. “Tow,” he said calmly, “have some reason to say 
so.” 

Jarvis reddened, turned about, stepped to the door, glanced 
back at the stranger, and went out of the room. 

Thorkell was now moaning on the pillow. “ 1 am all 
alone,” he said; and he fell to a bout of weeping. 

The stranger waited until the hysterical fit was over, and 
then said, “ Where is your daughter?” 

“Ah!” said Thorkell, dropping his red eyes. 

“ Send for her.” 

“I will. Juan, go to Bishop’s Court. Juan, I say, run 
fast and fetch Mistress Mona. Tell her that her father is ill.” 

As Thorkell gave this order Jarvis Kerruish returned to the 
room. 

“ No!” said Jarvis, lifting his hand against the young man. 

“No?” cried Thorkell. 

“ If this is my house, 1 will be master in it,” said Jarvis. 

“ Master! your house! yours!” Thorkell cried; and then he 
fell to a fiercer bout of hysterical curses. “ Bastard, I gave 
you all! But for me you would be on the roads — ay, the 
dunghill!” 

“ This violence will avail you nothing,” said Jarvis, with 
hard constraint. “ Mistress Mona shall not enter this house.” 

Jarvis placed himself with his back to the door. The 
stranger stepped up to him, laid one powerful hand on his 
arm, and drew him aside. “ Go for Mistress Mona,” he said 
to the young man. ‘ 4 Knock at the door on your return. I 
will open it.” 

The young man obeyed the stranger. Jarvis stood a mo- 





And peered into the stranger’s eyes . — Page 331 




THE DEEMSTER. *631 

ment looking blankly into the stranger’s face. Then he went 
out of the room again. 

Thorkell was whimpering on the pillow. “ It is true/’ he 
said, with laboring breath, “though I hate superstition and 
loathe it, I was once its victim — once only. My son Ewan was 
killed by my brother’s son, Dan. They loved' each othei like 
David and J onathan, but 1 told Ewan a lie, and they fought, 
and Ewan was brought home dead. Yes, I told a lie, but I 
believed it then. I made myself believe it. 1 listened to some 
old wife’s balderdash, and thought it true. And Dan was cut 
off — that is to say, banished, excommunicated; worse, worse. 
But he’s dead now. He was found dead in the snow. ” Again 
Thorkell tried to laugh, a poor despairing laugh that was half 
a cry. ‘ ‘ Dead ! They threatened me that he would push me 
from my place. And he is dead before me! So much for 
divination ! But tell me — you are a priest — tell me if that sin 
will drag me down to — to — But then, remember, I believed 
it was true — yes, I — ” 

The stranger’s face twitched, and his breathing became 
quick. 

“ And it was you who led the way to all that followed?” he 
said in a subdued voice. 

“ It was; it was — ” 

The stranger had suddenly reached over the bed and taken 
Thorkell by the shoulders. At the next instant he had re- 
linquished his hard grasp, and was standing upright as before, 
and with as calm a face. And Thorkell went jabbering on: 

“ These three nights I have dreamed a fearful dream. Shall 
1 tell you what it was? Shall I? I thought Dan, my brother’s 
son, arose out of his grave, and came to my bedside, and peered 
into my face. Then I thought I shrieked and died; and the 
first thing I saw in the other world was my own son Ewan, 
and he peered into my face also, and told me that I was 
d imned eternally. But, tell me, don’t you think it was only 
a dream? Father! father! I say tell me — ” 

Thorkell was clambering up by hold of the stranger’s coat. 

The stranger pushed him gently back. 

“ Lie still; lie still — you, too, have suffered much,” he said. 

Lie quiet — God is merciful. ” 

Just then Jarvis Kerruish entered in wild excitement. 
“Now I know who this man is,” he said, pointing to the 
stranger. 

“ Father Dalby,” said Thorkell. 

“ Pshaw!— it is Dam Mylrea.” 

Thorkell lifted himself stiffly on his elbow, and rigidly drew 


332 


THE DEEMSTER. 


his face closely up to the stranger’s face, and peered into the 
stranger’s eyes. Then he took a convulsive hold of the 
stranger’s coat, shrieked, and fell back on to the pillow. 

At that moment there was a loud knocking at the door be- 
low. The stranger left the room. In the hall a candle was 
burning. He put it out. Then he opened the door. A 
woman entered. She was alone. She passed him in the 
darkness without speaking. He went out of the house and 
pulled the door after him. 


X. 

An hour later than this terrible interview, wherein his 
identity (never hidden by any sorry masquerade) was suddenly 
revealed, Daniel Mylrea, followed closely at his heels by Davy 
Fayle, walked amid the fires of the valley to Bishop’s Court. 
He approached the old house by the sea front, and went into 
its grounds by a gate that opened on a footpath to the library 
through a clump of elms. Sluggish as was Davy’s intellect, he 
reflected that this was a path that no stranger could know. 

The sky of the night had lightened, and here and there a 
star gleamed through the thinning branches overhead. In a 
faint breeze the withering leaves of the dying summer rustled 
slightly. On the meadow before the house a silvery haze of 
night-dew lay in its silence. Sometimes the croak of a frog 
came from the glen; and from the sea beyond (though seem- 
ingly from the mountains opposite) there rose into the air the 
rumble of the waves on the shore. 

Daniel Mylrea passed on with a slow, strong step, but a 
secret pain oppressed him. He was walking on ground that 
was dear with a thousand memories of happy childhood. He 
was going back for some brief moments that must be painful 
and joyful, awful and delicious, to the house which he had 
looked to see no more. Already he was very near to those who 
were very dear to him, and to whom he, too — yes, it must be 
so — to whom he, too, in spite of all, must still be dear. “ Fa- 
ther, father,” he whispered to himself, “ And Mona, my 
Mona, my love, my love.” Only the idle chatter of the sap- 
less leaves answered to the yearning cry of his broken spirit. 

He had passed out of the shade of the elms into the open 
green of the meadow with the stars above it, when another 
voice came to him. It was the voice of a child singing. Clear 
and sweet, and with a burden of tenderness such as a child’s 
voice rarely carries, it floated through the quiet air. 

Daniel Mylrea passed on until he came by the library win- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


333 


dow, which was alight with a rosy glow. There he stood for 
a moment and looked into the room. His father, the bishop, 
was seated in the oak chair that was clamped with iron clamps. 
Older he seemed to be, and with the lines a thought deeper on 
his massive brow. On a stool at his feet, with one elbow rest- 
ing on the apron in front of him, a little maiden sat, and she 
was singing. A fire burned red on the hearth before them. 
Presently the bishop rose from his chair, and went out of the 
room, walking feebly, and with drooping head. 

Then Daniel Mylrea walked round to the front of the house 
and knocked. The door was opened by a servant whose face 
was strange to him. Everything that he saw was strange, and 
yet everything was familiar. The hall was the same, but 
smaller, and when it echoed to his foot a thrill passed through 
him. 

He asked for the bishop, and was led like a stranger through 
his father’s house to the door of the library. The little maiden 
was now alone in the room. She rose from her stool as he en- 
tered, and, without the least reserve, stepped up to him and 
held out her hand. He took her tender little palm in his great 
fingers, and held it for a moment while he looked into her face. 
It was a beautiful child-face, soft and fair and oval, with a 
faint tinge of olive in the pale cheeks, and with yellow hair — 
almost white in the glow of the red fire — falling in thin tresses 
over a full, smooth forehead. 

He sat and drew her closer to him, still looking steadily into 
her face. Then in a tremulous voice he asked her what her 
name was, and the little maiden, who had shown no fear at 
all, nor any bashfulness, answered that her name was Aileen. 

“But they call me Ailee,” she added, promptly; “every- 
body calls me Ailee. ” 

“ Everybody? Who?” 

“ Oh, everybody,” she answered, with a true child’s em- 
phasis. 

“ Your mother?” 

She shook her head. 

“ Your — your — perhaps — your — ” 

She shook her head more vigorously. 

“ I know what you’re going to say, but I’ve got none,” she 
said. 

“ Got none?” he repeated. 

The little maiden’s face took suddenly a wondrous solemnity, 
and she said, “ My father died a long, long, long time ago—* 
when I was only a little baby.” 

His lips quivered, and his eyes fell from her face. 


334 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Such a long, long while ago — you wouldn't think. And 
auntie says I can't even remember him. " 

“ Auntie?" 

“ But shall I tell you what Kerry said it was that made him 
die? — shall I?— only I must whisper — and you won't tell auntie, 
will you? — because auntie doesn't know — shall I tell you?" 

His quivering lips whitened, and with trembling hands he 
drew aside the little maiden’s head that her innocent eyes 
might not gaze into his face. 

“ How old are you, Ailee ven?" he asked, in a brave voice. 

“ Oh, I'm seven — and auntie, she’s seven too; auntie and I 
are twins." 

“ And you can sing, can you not? "W ill you sing for me?" 

“ What shall I sing?" 

“ Anything, sweetheart — what you sung a little while 
since." 

“ For grandpa?" 

“ Grandpa?" 

“ Kerry says no, it's uncle, not grandpa. But that's 
wrong," with a look of outraged honor; “ and besides, how 
should Kerry know? It's not her grandpa, is it? Do you 
know Kerry?" Then the little face saddened all at once. 
“ Oh, 1 forgot — poor Kerry." 

“ Poor Kerry!" 

“ I used to go and see her. You go up the road, and then 
on and on and on until you come to some children, and then 
on and on and on until you get to a little boy— and then you're 
there." 

“ Won't you sing, sweetheart?" 

“ I'll sing grandpa's song." 

“ Grandpa's?" 

“ Yes, the one he likes." 

Then the little maiden's dimpled face smoothened out, and 
her simple eyes turned gravely upward as she began to sing: 

“ O, Myle Ckaraine, where got you your gold? 

Lone, lone, you have left me here. 

O, not in the Curragh, deep under the mold, 

Lone, lone, and void of cheer.” 

It was the favorite song of his own boyish days; and while 
the little maiden sung it seemed to the crime-stained man who 
gazed through a dim haze into her cherub face that the voice 
of her dead father had gone into her voice. He listened while 
he could, and when the tears welled up to his eyes, with his 
horny hands he drew her fair head down to his heaving breast, 
and sobbed beneath his breath, “ Ailee ven, Ailee ven." 


THE DEEMSTER. 


335 


The little maiden stopped in her song to look up in bewil- 
derment at the bony, wet face that was stooping over her. 

At that moment the door of the room opened, and the bish- 
op entered noiselessly. A moment he stood on the threshold, 
with a look of perplexity. Then he made a few halting steps, 
and said : 

“ My eyes are not what they were, sir, and I see there is no 
light but the fire-light; but I presume you are the good Father 
Dalby?” 

Daniel Mylrea had risen to his feet. 

“ I come from him,” he answered. 

“ Is he not coming himself?” 

“ He can not come. He charged me with a message to 
you.” 

“ You are very welcome. My niece will be home presently. 
Be seated, sir.” 

Daniel Mylrea did not sit, but continued to stand before his 
father, with head held down. After a moment he spoke 
again. 

“ Father Dalby,” he said, “ is dead.” 

The bishop sunk to his chair. “ When — when — ” 

“ He died the better part of a month ago.” 

The bishop rose to his feet. 

“ He was in this island but yesterday. ” 

“ He bade me tell you that he had fulfilled his pledge to 
you and come to the island, but died by the visitation of God 
the same night whereon he landed here.” 

The bishop put one hand to his forehead. 

“ Sir,” he said, “ my hearing is also failing me, for, as you 
see, I am an old man now, and besides 1 have had trouble in 
my time. Perhaps, sir, I did not hear you aright?” 

Then Daniel Mylrea told in few words the story of the 
priest’s accident and death, and how the man at whose house 
he died had made bold to take the good priest’s mission upon 
himself. 

The bishop listened with visible pain, and for awhile said 
nothing. Then, speaking in a faltering voice, with breath 
that came quickly, he asked who the other man had been. 
“ For the good man has been a blessing to us,” he added, 
nervously. 

To this question there was no reply, and he asked again: 

“ Who?” 

“Myself.” 

The bishop lifted with trembling fingers his horn-bridged 
spectacles to his eyes. 


336 


THE DEEMSTER. 


44 Your voice is strangely familiar/' he said. 44 What is 
your name?" 

Again there was no answer. 

44 Give me your name, sir — that I may pray of God to 
bless you." 

Still there was no answer. 

44 Let me remember it in my prayers." 

Then in a breaking voice Daniel Mylrea replied: 

44 In your prayers my poor name has never been forgotten." 

At that the bishop tottered a pace backward. 

44 Light," he said, faintly. 44 More light." 

He touched a bell on the table, and sunk quietly into his 
chair. Daniel Mylrea fell to his knees at the bishop’s feet. 

44 Father," he said, in a fervent whisper, and put his lips to 
the bishop’s hand. 

The door opened, and a servant entered with candles. At 
the same moment Daniel Mylrea stepped quickly out of the 
room. 

Then the little maiden leaped from the floor to the bishop’s 
side. 

44 Grandpa, grandpa! Oh, what has happened to grand- 
pa?" she cried. 

The bishop’s head had dropped into his breast and he had 
fainted. When he opened his eyes in consciousness Mona was 
bathing his forehead and damping his lips. 

44 My child," he said, nervously, 44 one has come back to us 
from the dead. ’’ 

And Mona answered him with the thought that was now 
uppermost in her mind: 

44 Dear uncle," she said, 44 my poor father died half an 
hour ago. ’’ 


CHAPTER XLY. 

44 OUR FATHER, WHICH ART IN HEAVEN." 

Not many days after the events recorded in the foregoing 
chapter, the people of Man awoke to the joyful certainty that 
the sweating sickness had disappeared. The solid wave of 
heat had gone; the ground had become dry and the soil light; 
and no fetid vapors floated over the curraghs at midday. Also 
the air had grown keener, the nights had sharpened, and in 
the morning the fronds of hoar-frost hung on the withering 
leaves of the trammon. 

Then the poor folk began to arrange their thoughts con- 


THE DEEMSTER. 


337 


ceming the strange things that had happened ; to count up 
their losses by death; to talk of children that were fatherless; 
and of old men left alone in the world, like naked trunks, 
without bough or branch, flung on the bare earth by yester- 
day’s storm. 

And in that first roll-call after the battle of life and death 
the people suddenly became aware that, with the sweating 
sickness, the man who had brought the cure for it had also 
disappeared. He was not on the curraghs, he was no longer 
in Michael, and further east he had not traveled. None could 
tell what had become of him. When seen last he was walking 
south through German toward Patrick. He was then alone, 
save for the half-daft lad, Davy Fayle, who slouched at his 
heels like a dog. As he passed up Creg Willey’s Hill the peo- 
ple of St. John’s followed him in ones and twos and threes to 
offer him their simple thanks. But he pushed along as one 
who hardly heard them. When he came by the Tynwald he 
paused and turned partly toward Greeba, as though half 
minded to alter his course. But, hesitating no longer, he fol- 
lowed the straight path toward the village at the foot of Slieu 
Whallin. As he crossed the green the people of St. John’s, 
who followed him up the hill-road, had grown to a great num- 
ber, being joined there by the people of Tynwald. And when 
he passed under the ancient mount, walking with long, rapid 
steps, his chin on his breast and his eyes kept steadfastly down, 
the gray-headed men uncovered their heads, the young women 
thrust their young children under his hands for his blessing, 
and all by one impulse shouted in one voice, “ God bless the 
priest!” “ Heaven save the priest!” 

There were spectators of that scene who were wont to say, 
when the sequel had freshened their memories, that amid this 
wild tumult of the gratitude of the island’s poor people, he 
who was the subject of it made one quick glance of pain up- 
ward to the mount, now standing empty above the green, and 
then, parting the crowds that encircled him, pushed through 
them without word, or glance, or sign. Seeing at last that he 
shrunk from their thanks, the people followed him no further, 
but remained on the green, watching him as he passed on to- 
ward Slieu Whallin, and then up by the mountain track. 
When he had reached the top of the path, where it begins its 
descent to the valley beyond, he paused again and turned 
about, glancing back. The people below saw his full figure 
clearly outlined against the sky, and once more they sent up 
their shout by one great impulse in one great voice that 
drowned the distant rumble of the sea: “ God bless the 


THE DEEMSTEK. 


338 

priest!” “Heaven save the priest!” And he heard it, for 
instantly he faced about and disappeared. 

When he was gone it seemed as if a spell had broken. The 
people looked into each other’s faces in bewilderment, as if 
vaguely conscious that somewhere and some time, under con- 
ditions the same, yet different, all that they had then seen their 
eyes had seen before. And bit by bit the memory came back 
to them, linked with a name that might not be spoken. Then 
many things that had seemed strange became plain. 

In a few days the whisper passed over Man, from north to 
south, from east to west, from the sod cabins on the curragh 
to the castle at Castletown, that he who had cured the peo- 
ple of the sickness, he who had been mistaken for the priest 
out of Ireland, was none other than the unblessed man long 
thought to be dead; and that he had lived to be the savior of 
his people. 

The great news was brought to Bishop’s Court, and it was 
found to be there already. Rumor said that from Castletown 
an inquiry had come asking if the news were true, but none 
could tell what answer Bishop’s Court had made. The bishop 
had shut himself up from all visits, even those of his clergy. 
With Mona and the child, Ewan’s little daughter, he had 
passed the days since Thorkell’s death, and not until the day 
of Thorkell’s funeral did he break in upon his solitude. Then 
he went down to the little church-yard that stands over by the 
sea. 

They buried the ex-Deemster near to his son Ewan, and 
with scarcely a foot’s space between them. Except Jarvis 
Kerruish, the bishop was Thorkell’s sole mourner, and hardly 
had the service ended, or the second shovel of earth fallen 
from old Will-as-Thorn’s spade ? when Jarvis whipped about 
and walked away. Then the bishop stood alone by his broth- 
er’s unhonored grave, trying to forget his malice and un- 
charity, and his senseless superstitions that had led to many 
disasters, thinking only with the pity that is nigh to love of 
the great ruin whereunto his poor beliefs had tottered down. 
And when the bishop had returned home the roll-call of near 
kindred showed him pitiful gaps. “ The island grows very 
lonesome, Mona,” he said. 

That night Davy Fayle came to Bishop’s Court with a book 
in his hand. He told Mona how he had found the “ Ben-my- 
Chree ” a complete wreck on the shingle of the Doon Creek 
in the Calf Sound, and the book in its locker. Not a syllable 
could Davy read, but he knew that the book was the fishing- 


THE DEEMSTER. 339 

log of the lugger, and that since he saw it last it had been 
filled with writings. 

Mona took the book into the library, and with the bishop 
she examined it. It was a small quarto, bound in sheepskin, 
with corners and back of untaimed leather. Longways on the 
back the words “ * Ben-my-Chree * Fishing Log '' were let- 
tered, as with a soft quill in a bold hand. On the front page 
there was this inscription: 

“ Ben-my-Chree. 

Owner, Daniel Mylrea, Bishop’s Court, 

Isle of Man. 

Master, Illiam Quilleash.” 

Over the page was the word “ Accounts,” and then fol- 
lowed the various items of the earnings and expenditure of the 
boat. The handwriting was strong and free, but the book- 
keeping was not lucid. 

Eight pages of faintly tinted paper, much frayed, and with 
lines ruled by hand one way of the sheet only, were filled with 
the accounts of the herring season of 1705. At the bottom 
there was an attempt at picking out; the items of profit and 
loss, and at reckoning the shares of owner, master, and man. 
The balance stood but too sadly on the wrong side. There 
was a deficit of forty pounds four shillings and sixpence. 

The bishop glanced at the entries, and passed them over with 
a sigh. But turning the leaves, he came upon other matter of 
more pathetic interest. This was a long personal narrative 
from the owner's pen, covering some two hundred of the 
pages. The bishop looked it through, hurriedly, nervously, 
and with eager eyes. Then he gave up the book to Mona. 

“ Read it aloud, child,” he said, in a voice unlike his own, 
and with a brave show of composure he settled himself to 
listen. 

For two hours thereafter Mona read from the narrative that 
was written in the book. What that narrative was does not 
need to be said. 

Often the voice of the reader failed her, sometimes it could 
not support itself. And in the lapses of her voice the silence 
was broken by her low sobs. 

The bishop listened long with a great outer calmness, for the 
affections of the father were struggling with a sense of the 
duty of the servant of God. At some points of the narrative 
these seemed so to conflict as to tear his old heart wofully. 
But he bore up very bravely, and tried to think that in what 
he had done seven years before he had done well. At au early 
stage of Mona's reading he stopped her to say: 


340 


THE DEEMSTER. 


“ Men have been cast on desert islands beforetime, and too 
often they have been adrift on unknown seas.” 

Again he stopped her to add, with a slow shake of the head; 

“ Men have been outlawed, and dragged out weary years in 
exile — men have been oftentimes under the ban and chain of 
the law.” 

And once again he interrupted and said, in a trembling un * 
der-tone, “ It is true — it has been what I looked for — it has 
been a death in life. ” 

But as Mona went on to read of how the outcast man, kept 
back from speech with every living soul, struggled to preserve 
the spiritual part of him, the bishop interrupted once more, 
and said, in a faltering voice: 

“ This existence has been quite alone in its desolation. ” 

As Mona went on again to read of how the unblessed creat« 
ure said his prayer in his solitude, not hoping that God would 
hear, but thinking himself a man outside God's grace, though 
God's hand was upon him — thinking himself a man doomed 
to everlasting death, though the blessing of Heaven had 
already fallen over him like morning dew — then all that re- 
mained of spiritual pride in the heart of the bishop was borne 
down by the love of the father, and his old head fell into his 
breast, and the hot tears rained down his wrinkled cheeks. 

Later the same night Mona sent for Davy Fayle. The lad 
was easily found; he had been waiting in the darkness outside 
the house, struggling hard with a desire to go in and tell Misv 
tress Mona where Daniel Mylrea was to be found. ” 

“ Davy,” she said, “ do you know where he is?” 

“ Sure,” said Davy. 

“ And you could lead me to him?” 

** I could.” 

“ Then come here very early in the morning, and we will go 
together.” 

Next day when Mona, attired for her journey, went down 
for a hasty breakfast, she found the bishop fumbling a lettei 
in his trembling fingers. 

“ Bead this, child,” he said, in a thick voice, and he handed 
the letter to her. 

She turned it over nervously. The superscription ran, 
“ These to the Lord Bishop of Man, at his Palace of Bishop's 
Court,” and the seal on the other face was that of the insular 
government. 

While the bishop made pretense of wiping with his hand- 
kerchief the horn-bridged spectacles on his nose, Mona opened 
and read the letter. 


THE EEEMSTEE. 


341 


It was from the Governor at Castletown, and said that the 
Lord of Man and the Isles, in recognition of the great services 
done by Daniel Mylrea to the people of the island during their 
recent affliction, would be anxious to appoint him Deemster of 
Man, in succession to his late uncle, Thorkell Mylrea (being 
satisfied that he was otherwise qualified for the post), if the 
Steward of the Ecclesiastical Courts were willing to remove 
the censure of the Church under which he now labored. 

When she had finished reading Mona cast one glance of nerv- 
ous supplication upward to the bishop’s face, and then with a 
quick cry of joy, which was partly pain, she flung her arms 
about his neck. 

The old bishop was quite broken down. 

“Man’s judgments on man,” he said, “are but as the 
anger of little children — here to-day, gone to-morrow, and the 
Father’s face is over all. ” 

******* 

What need to tell of one of the incidents of Mona’s jour- 
ney, or of the brave hopes that buoyed her up on the long and 
toilsome way? Many a time during these seven years past she 
had remembered that it was she who had persuaded Dan to 
offer his life as an atonement for his sin. And often the 
thought came back to her with the swiftness of remorse that 
it was she who, in her blindness, had sent him to a doom that 
was worse than death. But Heaven’s ways had not been her 
ways, and all was well. The atonement had been made, and 
the sin had been wiped out of the book of life. Dan, her love, 
her beloved, had worked out his redemption. He had proved 
himself the great man she had always known he must be. 
He was to come back loaded with honor and gratitude, and 
surrounded by multitudes of friends. 

More than once, when the journey was heaviest, she put her 
hand to her bosom and touched the paper that nestled so 
warmly there. Then in her mind’s eye she saw Dan in the 
seat of the Deemster, the righteous judge of his own people. 
Oh, yes, he would be the Deemster, but he would be Dan still, 
her Dan, the lively, cheerful, joyous, perhaps even frolicsome 
Dan once more. He would sport with her like Ailee; he would 
play with her as he used to play long ago with another little 
girl that she herself could remember — tickling her under her 
armpits, and under her chin, and in twenty different cozy 
nests of her pretty body, where whole broods of birdies sent 
up a chorus of squealing song-laughter. 

The burden of Mona’s long years of weary sorrow had been 
so suddenly lifted away that she could not restrain her thoughts 


342 


THE DEEMSTER. 


from childish sportiveness. But sometimes she remembered 
Ewan, and then her heart saddened, and sometimes she 
thought of herself, and then it flushed full of quick, hot blood. 
And, oh, how delicious was the secret thing that sometimes 
stole up between her visions of Dan and the high destiny that 
was before him. It was a vision of herself, transfigured by his 
noble love, resting upon and looking up to him, and thus pass- 
ing on and on to the end. 

Once she remembered, with a chill passing through her that 
in the writing which she had read Dan had said he was ill! 
But what of that? She was going to him, and would nurse 
him back to health. 

And Davy Fayle, walking at her side, was full of his own 
big notions, too. Mastha Dan would be Dempster, true; but 
he'd have a boat for his pleasure, sarten sure. Davy Fayle 
would sail man in her, perhaps mate, and may be skipper 
some day — who knows? And then — lying aft and drifting at 
the herrings, and smookin’, and the stars out, and the moon 
makin' a peep — aw, well, well, well! 

They reached the end of their journey at last. It was in a 
small gorse-covered house far over the wild moor, on the edge 
of the Chasms, looking straight out on the hungry sea. In its 
one bare room (which was without fire, and was cheerless with 
little light) there was a table, a settle, a chair, a stool, and a 
sort of truckle-bed. Dan was there, the same, yet, oh, how 
different! He lay on the bed unconscious, near to death of the 
sickness — the last that the scourge was to slay. 

* * % * * * * 

Of this story of great love and great suffering what is left to 
tell? 

There are moments when life seems like the blind swirl of a 
bat in the dusk — blundering, irresponsible, not to be counted 
with, the swift creature of evil chance. We see a little child's 
white face at a hospital window, a strong man toiling hopeless- 
ly against wrong, the innocent suffering with the guilty, good 
instincts thwarted and base purposes promoted, and we ask 
ourselves, with a thrill of the heart, What, after all, is God 
doing in this His world? And from such blind laboring of 
chance the tired and beaten generations of men seem to find 
it reward enough to drop one after one to the hushed realms 
of rest. 

Shall we marvel very much if such a moment came to this 

E ure and noble woman as she stood in the death-chamber of 
er beloved, with whom, after years of longing, she was at 
last brought face to face? 


LB Ja 16 


THE DEEMSTER. 


343 


But again, there are other moments, higher and better, 
when there is such a thing in this so bewildering world as the 
victory of vanquishment, when the true man crushed by evil 
chance is yet the true man undestroyed by it and destroying 
it, when Job on his dunghill is more to be envied than Pharaoh 
on his throne, and death is as good as life. 

And such a higher moment came to Mona in that death- 
chamber. She sat many hours by Dan's side, waiting for the 
breaking of his delirium and the brief space of consciousness 
and of peace which would be the beginning of the end. It 
came at long, long length, and, ah, how soon it came! 

The night had come and gone while she sat and watched. 
When the sunrise shot red through the skin-covered window it 
fell on Dan and awakened him. Opening his eyes, he saw 
Mona, and his soul smiled over his wasted face. He could 
not speak, nor could he lift his worn hands. She knew that 
the time was near, and holding back her grief, like wild creat- 
ures held by the leash, she dropped to her knees, and clasped 
her hands together to pray. And while she prayed the dying 
man repeated some of the words after her. 

“Our Father — " 

“ Our — Father—" 

“ Which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name — ” 

“ Hallowed — be — Thy — name — 99 

“ Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
Heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; and 
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil — " 

“ But deliver us from evil—" 

“Amen." 

“ Amen." 


THE EMD. 
































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